Footnotes

• Treasury 6, no. 1065
  
  銅胎畫琺瑯開光花卉鼻煙壺
  御製品，宮廷作坊，黃土赭色「康熙御製」楷款，1705-1718
  
  Imperial Integrity
  
  Famille rose enamels on copper, with gold; with a flat lip and a recessed foot, slightly concave and surrounded by a protruding flat footrim; painted on each main side with a circular panel, one with chrysanthemums and day lily, the other with camellias and bamboo, the panels surrounded by a scrolling, formalized foliage design on a yellow ground; the foot inscribed in brown regular script Kangxi yuzhi ('Made by imperial command of the Kangxi emperor'); the interior covered with a patchy, pale turquoise-blue enamel; the exposed lip and inner neck gilt
  Imperial, palace workshops, Beijing, 1705–1718
  Height: 4.81 cm
  Mouth/lip: 0.74/0.99 cm
  Stopper: gilt bronze, chased with a formalized floral design; probably original; ivory finial
  
  Condition: one area of fairly deep scratches along the bottom of the panel with chrysanthemums and day-lilies; some similarly deep scratches along the reign mark and base; the gold worn on footrim and lip; usual minor wear from use, not obtrusive. General relative condition: excellent
  
  Provenance:
  Sotheby's, London, 7 June 1990, lot 294
  
  Published:
  Treasury 6, no. 1065
  
  Commentary:
  The pale pink and pastel yellow from the famille rose palette of enamels are used here with colours drawn from the traditional famille verte palette, indicating an early date among the surviving snuff bottles from the Kangxi palace workshops. This is also confirmed by the very unusual brown reign mark. Among the earliest experimental Kangxi palace enamels is a group of wares on a yellow ground that bear seal script marks, the formalization of the script following exactly that of recorded personal seals of the Kangxi emperor. These seal script marks are very rare, and were soon abandoned in favour of regular script, but among them is a mallet vase (Gillingham 1978, no. 7) on which the seal-script mark is in a similar brown enamel, suggesting that it was among those colours used in the early years of palace enamelling. Another apparently early bottle with a brown mark, in an unusual foliate panel, is still in the imperial collection (Chang Lin-sheng 1991, no. 4). The restricted palette here is also an indication of an early product. Another likely indication of an early date lies in the bottle's unusual dimensions. It is on the small size for bottles of the group, but this is accentuated by the unusual thinness of the form, which is more radically compressed than is usual, considerably reducing its capacity. It is likely that the stoppers on several of these enamelled metal bottles are original. In this case it seems almost certain, since the metalwork matches precisely and the unusually small neck would prove difficult to match up later with a spare early stopper in the absence of the original. To be sure, the stopper may have been made to fit and match at a later date as a replacement, but any later owner replacing a missing stopper would surely have tended to imitate more common designs that would have been well known from many surviving examples, whereas this stopper is distinctive in both design and in the very rare central depression to hold a tiny pearl finial (now replaced by a fragment of ivory).
  
  Kangxi palace-enamelled snuff bottles are rare today: there are currently only thirteen recorded examples, three of which are in the Bloch Collection. For a listing of all thirteen, please see under Treasury 6, no. 1065.
  
  象徵廉正的康熙御製款煙壺
  
  銅胎畫琺瑯，黃金；平唇， 微凹斂底，突出圈足，足底完全接觸地面； 腹前後開光處畫菊、萱草、竹、山茶，開光外黃地繪卷枝紋；底黃土赭色書"康熙御製"； 內壁塗斑駁的淡綠松色藍琺瑯；不施琺瑯的唇與頸內都描金
  御製品，宮廷作坊， 北京， 1705～1718年
  高：4.81 厘米
  口經/唇經：0.74/0.99 厘米
  蓋： 鎏金青銅，鏤刻形式化的花朵，大概是原件；象牙頂飾象牙頂飾
  
  狀態敘述：
  沿畫菊花與萱草的開光的下邊呈相當深的抓痕；年款以及圈足底也有同樣的抓痕；圈足與唇上的金彩有所磨損；經過歲月的磨擦以後，有一般性的無足輕重的磨損，不引人注目。總體的相對狀況： 極善
  
  來源：
  蘇富比，倫敦，1990年 6月7日，拍賣品號 294
  
  文獻：
  Treasury 6, 編號1065
  
  說明:
  斷代的根據，請參閱本壺的英文說明，已知的康熙宮廷畫琺瑯的鼻煙壺今存十三件，請參見 Treasury 6, 編號1065。
  
  

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Category: Asian Art / Chinese Works of Art

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