Footnotes

• Treasury 2, no. 335
  
  水晶雕古幣紋鼻煙壺
  擬御製品，擬宮廷作坊製，北京，1736～1820
  
  A carved rock-crystal 'ancient coin' snuff bottle
  
  Crystal; very well hollowed, with a concave lip and concave foot surrounded by a very narrow rounded footrim; carved in low relief on each side with the overlapped obverse and reverse of a five-zhu coin surrounded by a symmetrical, formalized floral design centred on each narrow side
  Probably imperial, probably palace workshops, Beijing, 1736–1820
  Height: 5.05 cm
  Mouth/lip: 0.68/1.71 cm
  Stopper: glass; vinyl collar
  
  Condition: original flaws across the lip; otherwise, workshop condition (what looks like a big chip out of the neck in the photo isn't; it's a flaw)
  
  Provenance:
  The Hon. Irene Austin (Fernhill Park Collection, formed between 1944 and 1977)
  Chinese Porcelain Company (1991)
  
  Published:
  Chinese Porcelain Company 1991, no. 163
  Kleiner, Yang, and Shangraw 1994, no. 200
  Treasury 2, no. 335
  
  Exhibited:
  Chinese Porcelain Company, New York, October 1991
  Creditanstalt, Vienna, May–June 1990
  Hong Kong Museum of Art, March–June 1994
  National Museum, Singapore, November 1994–February 1995
  
  The carving style on this bottle is very similar to glass bottles attributable to the palace workshops, including here some apparently wheel-cut lines defining the character zhu on the coins and on the leaves and flower heads of the formalized floral design. The subject matter also relates to other palace arts. Formalized floral designs of exactly this type are found on a wide range of imperial glass and jade snuff bottles. They are also a common border design on imperial enamel bottles made at the court and at Guangzhou for the court, where they are used in exactly the same way to fill in the narrow sides and space around the principal decoration with a busy pattern. On jade bottles, they occur quite commonly either as the subsidiary or the overall design on post-1756 works made at the Tibetan workshop at the palace (the Xifanzuo). There is ample evidence that such designs were a standard imperial filler, and they even appear commonly, as Kleiner has pointed out, on imperial ceramics made at Jingdezhen. For a glass bottle from the Kardos Collection with a similar design of overlapping coins, but in a yellow overlay on amber glass, see Sotheby's New York, 1 July 1985, lot 45. Apart from the colour combination, thought to have been an imperial one of the later eighteenth and early nineteenth century, the bottle is also decorated with narrow-side chi dragons, a subject commonly used on imperial snuff bottles and, during the latter part of the eighteenth century, one of the more common narrow-side imperial subjects.
  
  The coin shown here is typical of the post-archaic Chinese coinage, known in English as 'cash', the identifying feature being the square hole in the centre. This coin is a five-zhu piece. Zhu is a measure of weight, but like all units of measurement, its value varied over time, and coins probably seldom had their nominal weight, anyway; extant five-zhu coins seem to vary from 1.5 to over 5 grams, and they were minted in different metals. Ignoring these discontinuities, the five-zhu piece was the longest-lived of all Chinese coins, first minted in 118 BCE and not permanently abandoned until 621. Interruptions in its use were associated with usurpation and inflation, so it seems to have become a symbol of the orthodox succession and social order, and in later dynasties it was prized for its antiqueness. An intriguing imperial connection with the subject of these coins is made through one of the Daoguang emperor's personal belt buckles. In a handscroll showing the emperor seated at leisure with his children, snuff bottle in hand, his belt buckle incorporates just such a five-zhu coin (see JICSBS, Autumn 1996, p. 24).
  
  水晶雕錢幣紋鼻煙壺
  
  水晶； 掏膛徹底，凹唇，凹底，圓棱圈足；各正面淺浮雕五銖錢正反二面，側面雕勻稱的形式化花紋
  擬為御製品，大概為宮廷作坊製品，北京，1736–1820
  高﹕ 5.05 厘米
  口經/唇經： 0.68/1.71 厘米
  蓋： 玻璃；乙烯基座
  
  狀態敘述： 橫唇有原本的瑕疵；此外，出坊狀態 (照片上，頸部似有大缺口，實為瑕疵)
  
  來源﹕
  The Hon. Irene Austin (Fernhill Park 珍藏，1944年與1977年之間搜集的)
  Chinese Porcelain Company (1991)
  
  文獻﹕
  Chinese Porcelain Company 1991, 編號163
  Kleiner, Yang, and Shangraw 1994, 編號200
  Treasury 2, 編號335
  
  展覽﹕
  Chinese Porcelain Company, New York, October 1991
  Creditanstalt, Vienna, May–June 1990
  香港藝術館，1994年3月～6月
  National Museum, Singapore, November 1994–February 1995
  
  說明﹕
  本壺的雕風很像其他可歸功於宮廷作坊的玻璃煙壺，包括似是切割砂輪陰刻的輪廓線，側面的圖案也出現在各種御作玻璃煙壺、玉煙壺。Kardos 珍藏類似的搭接錢紋黃套玻璃壺，有紐約蘇富比1985年7月1日, 拍賣品號 45。考慮那件壺的黃色與螭紋，應該算是御 製品。
  
  五銖錢初鑄於公元前118年，最後廢止於621年，是中國最長壽的錢幣。存世的各時代的五銖錢有1•5克到5克多的 ，漢行五銖300多年以後，有魏五銖、蜀的直百于銖、東晉的沈充五銖、南北朝的多種五銖，一直到唐高宗武德四年，隋朝的五銖才正式廢止。清宣宗道光皇帝曾有一個五銖錢帶鉤(參閱《國際中國鼻煙壺協會的學術期刊》, 1996年秋期，頁 24).
  
  

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Category: Asian Art / Chinese Works of Art

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