Footnotes

Treasury 7, no. 1665

琥珀、黃金鼻煙壺


Forever Precious

Translucent orange and yellow-ochre amber, and gold; made of three segments of amber joined at the shoulders and base with gold, with a gold neck and a gold plug in a hole in the foot; with a convex lip and slightly recessed flat foot, the lower join doubling as a protruding convex footrim; the amber undecorated, the gold with formalized floral filigree work, the upper-neck rim with a simulated-rope band, repeated on a smaller scale at the edge of the shoulder and base joints, the slightly raised circular gold plug on the foot engraved in regular script with the single character zhen (precious)

1750–1900
Height: 4.87 cm
Mouth/lip: 0.69/0.92 cm
Stopper: translucent, variegated yellow amber
Condition: the amber crizzled minutely all over; otherwise in workshop condition


Provenance:
Sotheby's, Hong Kong, 29 April 1992, lot 465

Published:
The Antique Collectors' Club 2, no. 5, September 1967 (unpaginated)
Kleiner, Yang, and Shangraw 1994, no. 276
Zhao Lihong 1996, p. 104, top centre
Treasury 7, no. 1665

Exhibited:
Hong Kong Museum of Art, March-June 1994
National Museum of Singapore, November 1994-January 1995

Commentary:
This unique and quite extraordinary bottle has, in the past, been confused with a group of bottles with semi-precious stones set in a filigree casing on plain snuff bottles in various materials. This led to a muted response considering its extraordinary rarity and obvious appeal and quality, and attracted a late-Qing date. Actually, the group of filigree bottles was not made during the late-Qing at all, but in the years between 1955 and the late 1960s. At that time Arts and Crafts workshops were set up in Beijing to train a new generation of craftsman in traditional skills, and when there was a foreign market for fancy snuff bottles, and none at all for plain ones. For about fifteen years, a workshop full of students and their teacher(s) took old, plain bottles and decorated them with fancy filigree designs (for example, there are eight on a page in Christie's, New York, 30 May 1991, lots 146 - 148 and 160 and 151). Although the occasional filigree bottle may date from the Guangxu period, these were mostly done in silver, not gilt metal and did not represent a new trend in any specific way. In the 1960s there were dozens of these filigree embellished bottles regularly on offer in London, for instance, and the department store Liberty's carried a selection alongside other modern Chinese crafts.
This bottle is completely different, in any case, from the mid-twentieth century bottles. For a start the metalwork is solid gold whereas the metal of the later group was gilt-metal; secondly it was conceived in its present form and is not a plain bottle re-decorated (indeed, could not be, since it would not hold together without the metalwork), and thirdly, it is nothing like the style of the mid-twentieth-century Beijing products. The trouble is that being unique there is nothing else by which we can accurately judge its date or its likely origin. It could be an imperial product, a one-off design made at the court under the Qianlong emperor, it might have been a gift to the same emperor. Equally, it could have been made at any time thereafter during the Qing dynasty. Although the court is a likely focus for an extraordinary and valuable little bottle like this, it by no means had a monopoly on either gold or fancy workmanship. It is quite possible that it was made in the Guangxu period - a later date might explain more easily how it has survived in such extraordinary condition, but it might also have been stored at court from the eighteenth century until some time after 1860, and then treasured and so protected from harm. Whenever it was made, the neatly engraved mark on the gold plug in the centre of the foot sums it up: 'Precious!'

The material has been described as having come from the Baltic region, and it is certainly typical of some of the material from that part of the world, but as we have pointed out under Treasury 7, no. 1573, we are not entirely comfortable with the simple method of describing all yellow, or yellow-orange amber as from the Baltic, and all brown material as from Burma, or other local sources.

When published in the Antique Collectors' Club in 1967, this bottle was valued at £15 - ah, those were the days!



永存的奇珍

半透明琥珀色與雄黃色的琥珀，金；由三塊琥珀作成，肩部、底以金絲箍圈箍斂，上有黃金頸，底有塞洞的黃金塞子；凸形唇、平面略斂底，底緣箍圈當作突出凸形圈足；琥珀無飾紋，頸上部有繩紋一周，下有細繩紋環；底中心金塞子刻"珍"一字楷款

1750～1900
高：4.87 厘米
口經/唇經：0.69/0.92 厘米
蓋：半透明色彩斑駁的琥珀
狀態敘述：琥珀通體呈表面的微裂紋；此外出坊狀態

來源：
蘇福比，香港，1992年4月29日，拍賣品號465
文獻﹕
The Antique Collector's Club 卷2 ，號 5 （1967年9 月，不標頁數）
Kleiner, Yang, and Shangraw 1994， 編號276
趙麗紅1996，頁104上中
Treasury 7， 編號1665
展覽﹕
香港藝術館，1994年3 月～6月
National Museum of Singapore, 1994年11月～1995年1月

說明：
過去，本壺與一系列的各種胎舊壺裝上描金絲、次等寶石箍圈的鼻煙壺老是分不清。那些煙壺是1955到1960年代後半期為了滿足國際市場要求而作的。光緒時期的金屬箍圈鼻煙壺時或出現，但它們多半是銀絲作的，跟本壺與解放後的產品都沒關系，也不足以形成新的趨勢。

本壺的箍圈是黃金作的，不是描金的；箍圈也不是在舊的煙壺上追套的（沒有箍圈，本壺就會散架了）；而且，它的式樣與二十世紀的那批迥異。但因為它是獨一的， 我們無從瞭解本壺是甚麼時期作的、是御製品還是進貢品等等。並且，雖然這是典型的所謂波羅海琥珀，我們老覺得只按琥珀的顏色來武斷它的來源有點不對勁，因而不敢用來源的假定來推測物器的時代。只好用底中心金塞子刻的 "珍" 字來概括吧。