清十八 / 十九世紀 白地套三色料「瓜瓞綿綿」圖鼻煙壺

Eric Young
倫敦蘇富比1987年3月3日，編號12

Hugh Moss、Victor Graham 及曾嘉寶，《A Treasury of Chinese Snuff Bottles: The Mary and George Bloch Collection》，卷5，香港，2002年，編號983

It is in good condition.
"In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective, qualified opinion. Prospective buyers should also refer to any Important Notices regarding this sale, which are printed in the Sale Catalogue.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF BUSINESS PRINTED IN THE SALE CATALOGUE."

Butterflies and bitter gourds are a combination rarely featured upon snuff bottles; they are made all the more unusual here by the colour combination of the overlay. Standard ruby red and a pale emerald green have been balanced by an unusual very pale and transparent yellow that seems almost lost against the ground colour. This allows the artist to emphasize the strong line of red running round the bottle.

It also raises some intriguing questions about the basic process of overlaying. For this bottle, a design probably preceded the glassmaker’s application of blobs of colour, since the disposition of the red seems rather strange and very specific. This is particularly true of the side displaying the larger red butterfly at the top, where a very thin patch of red runs diagonally to connect the upper area of red on one side to its lower equivalent on the other. While it would be possible for a bottle to have been produced from a ready-to-carve overlay blank without advance planning of the design, in this case the application of the colours suggests otherwise. Judging from the surviving body of good quality glass overlay carvings, the majority appear to be one-off works of art. The same designs are often repeated, but the compositions usually differ—a sure sign that each was approached as an individual work. True only of the best carvings, this indicates that at the top end of the market for fine cameo-overlay carvings the processes involved were so complex and time-consuming that saving time by repeating the same composition was hardly worth the effort.

Here, as in the case of Sale 5, lot 120, with its chi dragons in several different colours, the glassworker and the carver were evidently not in perfect harmony. In places the red bleeds into the yellow, leaving one gourd with a red tip. We may assume that the original intention was to create discrete colours for each element of the composition, but practical problems may have forced the carver to override that restriction. Random results originating in such elements of the production process might soon have become appreciated in their own right, however, so it becomes difficult to judge what is accidental and what intentional.

This is another ground in which a heavy suffusion of air bubbles gives the impression of a snowstorm ground plane, despite the absence of the small white flakes that identify an authentic example. It features a very rare colour combination and subject, and the carving is excellent and controlled with great confidence, although we discern a hint of undulation on the ground plane. A date from the mid- to late-Qianlong era is likely, but in private lapidary workshops there is no reason why such quality should not have persisted into the mid nineteenth century.