Footnotes

• Treasury 6, no. 1260
  
  瓷胎畫粉彩仕女圖鼻煙壺
  景德鎮，1790～1830
  
  A 'famille-rose' porcelain 'young lady' snuff bottle
  
  Famille-rose enamels on colourless glaze on porcelain; with a slightly convex lip and a convex circular panel on each main side; each panel painted with an identical framed composition, although with varied colouring, of a young woman standing behind a balustrade gazing intently at an orchid held in her right hand, a rolled bamboo curtain held by curtain hooks with decorative tassels hanging nearly to the level of her hair over the entrance to the room behind her; the lip painted gold; the inner neck and interior glazed
  Jingdezhen, 1790–1830
  Height: 6.49 cm
  Mouth/lip: 0.66/1.62 cm
  Stopper: iron-red, gold, and turquoise blue enamel on brown and colourless glaze on porcelain, made to imitate a coral cabochon set in an enamelled, gilt-bronze collar; contemporaneous but not original
  
  Condition: some fading to the gilding across the lip and to the gold circular borders, door frames, and hair pieces; scratches to the surface and slight fading to the enamels centrally on both sides
  
  Provenance:
  Hugh Moss (HK) Ltd. (1991)
  
  Published:
  Kleiner, Yang, and Shangraw 1994, no. 151
  Treasury 6, no. 1260
  
  Exhibited:
  Hong Kong Museum of Art, March–June 1994
  National Museum of Singapore, November 1994–February 1995
  
  This unique bottle offers a series of conflicting clues as to its origin. The design of a beautiful young woman in an architectural setting framed by a circular panel is typical of the palace workshops; it appears again and again on enamels on metal and glass, sometimes with European women, sometimes with Chinese. The style of the design and the nature of the enamels, however, suggest very strongly a non-imperial product from the mid-Qing period, and almost certainly, give or take a few years, the Jiaqing reign. There is one other feature that suggests a non-imperial product. In scenes of young women within the court, they are usually shown enjoying themselves at suitable pursuits for court ladies: they play music, embroider, paint, write poetry, entertain the children, even play in gardens and swing on swings. They are, in short, shown enjoying a carefree, gentle life of ease and delight. Such palace works of art were designed with the emperor in mind and depict the sort of lives his empresses, concubines, and female children might enjoy. As a rule, they would not depict rather sad, distracted-looking women longing for someone absent.
  
  The form resembles one type of European watch. By the mid-Qing period, such watches would have been fairly common among the wealthy and may have influenced snuff-bottle form. By the mid-Qing period, copies of Spanish coins minted in Mexico were found as snuff-bottle decoration (see Treasury 2, no. 238), so it is not unlikely that a European fob-watch might have influenced a private designer at Jingdezhen.
  
  The stopper is known not to be the original, for it was added by Hugh Moss in 1991. Old and designed for a porcelain bottle, it probably graced one of a set of imperial bottles at one time.
  
  瓷胎畫粉彩仕女圖鼻煙壺
  
  瓷胎無色釉上粉彩琺瑯；微凸唇，各正面有圓形凸面開光，開光繪美人拈蘭圖 ；唇塗金，內頸、內壁施釉
  景德鎮，1790–1830
  高﹕ 6.49 厘米
  口經/唇經： 0.66/1.62 厘米
  蓋：瓷胎無色、棕色釉上礬紅、金、 綠松石藍琺瑯彩，與壺為同時期作而非原件
  
  狀態敘述：唇上金彩與金彩細節有所退色，表面呈擦痕，兩正面中心的琺瑯料有所退色
  
  來源﹕
  Hugh Moss (HK) Ltd. (1991)
  
  文獻﹕
  Kleiner, Yang, and Shangraw 1994, 編號151
  Treasury 6, 編號1260
  
  展覽﹕
  香港藝術館，1994年3月～6月
  National Museum of Singapore, November 1994–February 1995
  
  說明﹕
  本壺設計和琺瑯料的性質應屬嘉慶朝。因為題材是憂鬱婦女，這大概不是宮中物。蓋是莫士撝1991年搭配的，擬原來是御製品。

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Category: Asian Art / Chinese Works of Art

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