清道光 纏絲棕白料鼻煙壺

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746

A barely perceptible chip to the outer lip and another on the protruding edge at shoulder level. Tiny surface scratches on the foot.
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Here is a decoration neither laid onto the surface nor sandwiched; this example represents a type of glass in which threads of white glass are folded into brown before being stretched, twisted, and folded again. The result is that the white threads have become evenly distributed throughout the bottle but without sacrificing their identity. The early-Qing writer Sun Tingquan 孫廷銓 (1613 – 1674) may have been describing this when he wrote, ‘Twining threads: glass is used to sandwich filaments; one waits until they are fused and then pulls and turns it on a lathe’ (纏絲者，以藥夾絲，待其融也，引而旋 [鏇] 之; brief explanatory notes are found in Zhongguo renmin zhengzhi 2008, pp. 348 – 349). In the middle of the following century, the same name is used for a process that was used when missionaries ‘supervised the production of three twining-thread glass watering pitchers and one twining-thread glass brush-holder’ (纏絲玻璃花澆三件，纏絲玻璃筆筒一件; Yang Boda 1983, p. 11; Yang Boda 1987, p. 79). One would think that the guidance of the missionaries would be unnecessary in 1753 if the process were known to Sun Tingquan in the seventeenth century, but it is likely that Sun was describing the making of a different sort of product; he discusses articles with solid interiors and those with empty interiors separately, and he places ‘twining threads’ in the former category. The watering pots and brush holder made in 1753 obviously were not solid blocks or rods of glass.

Whatever the terminological doubts raised by the documentary record, a cup made in a fashion similar to what we see in this snuff bottle is found in the Mrs Barney Dagan Collection (Brown and Rabiner 1990, p. 94. no. 61). A closer parallel is provided by another snuff bottle, and it is one that helps us to date the present example with greater accuracy (Snuff Bottles of the Ch’ing Dynasty 1978, p. 74, no. 84; also in JICSBS, Summer 1993, p. 15, fig. 44). Of identical material, with white threads spread throughout a transparent amber-brown matrix, it must have been made by the same workshop, probably during the same period. It bears the studio name Shende tang 慎德堂 (Hall for Care in the Cultivation of Virtue’), which was the Daoguang emperor’s personal residence in the Yuanming yuan (see Sale 2, lot 90 and Sale 6, lot 195 for porcelain bottles with this mark). The mark on the snuff bottle is convincing, and one may assume that the bottle was made between 1831, when the Shende tang was completed, and 1850, when the emperor died.

Although this snuff bottle was almost certainly blown into a mould, much of its unusual shape seems to have been achieved by the lapidary’s efforts. The ridge running around the shoulder would probably not have been blown but carved by the lapidary; the interior bubble of air is in no way affected by this ridge, suggesting it was not on any original mould.

Other examples of this sort of glass are known (Christie’sHong Kong, 4th November 1996, lot 639 and Lawrence 1996, no. 108), while others of similar form but different colours are in Hanhai Beijing, 24th October 1996, lot 65, a white version, and Sotheby’s New York, 1st December 1992, lot 433, an unusually well-finished ruby-red version.