Footnotes

Treasury 6, no. 1158


瓷胎描金御題詩山水鼻煙壺
景德鎮，描金乾隆年款，1760～1799


Inspiration Yixing

Gold and metallic-brown enamel on colourless glaze on porcelain; with a flat lip and slightly convex rectangular foot; painted on one main side with a country residence amidst trees on the far bank of a stretch of water, behind which stands an open pavilion on open ground, behind which rise five hills, two with pine trees, and on the other side with a poem inscribed in regular script, preceded by Qianlong yuzhi (By imperial command of the Qianlong emperor) and followed by two seals, Qian in negative seal script, and long in positive seal script, both panels surrounded by a frame of continuous leiwen (thunder pattern) design; the narrow sides and neck with a formalized floral design; the foot inscribed in gold seal script Qianlong nian zhi (Made during the Qianlong period); the lip painted gold; the glaze extending into the inside of the lip; the interior unglazed
Imperial kilns, Jingdezhen, 1760–1799
Height: 5.12 cm
Mouth/lip: 0.54/1.59 cm
Stopper: malachite; gilt-bronze finial; gilt-bronze collar
Condition: a little of the original gilding on the unglazed lip worn by stopper action; very minor surface wear from handling. General relative condition: unusually excellent

Provenance:
Ko Collection
Christie's, London, 14 June 1971, lot 98
Hugh M Moss Ltd., London, 1971
Margaret Prescott Wise
Edgar and Roberta Wise
Robert Kleiner (1995)
Published:
Sin, Hui, and Kwong, 1996, no. 93
JICSBS, Autumn 1998, p. 17, fig. 55 and p. 18, fig. 55a
Treasury 6, no. 1158

Commentary:
A few bottles are known with gold enamel designs on a brownish ground and have traditionally been thought to imitate gilt metal. Their true inspiration is far more likely to be found in such a bottle as lot 90, (Treasury 6, no. 1447) made of the brown stoneware of Yixing and decorated with a gold-enamelled design. The reason why Yixing may not previously have presented itself as an obvious inspiration for this type of bottle is that Yixing snuff bottles were considered to be a predominantly nineteenth-century type, while the few known porcelain bottles with gold decoration on brown mostly predate the nineteenth century. The exceptional Yixing bottle in the Bloch collection, lot 90, however, can now be dated to 1763, rather than sixty years later, as previously thought. This alters the picture radically. Together with a group of Qianlong-marked Yixing vessels in the imperial collection that have been recently published, the Bloch bottle establishes the existence of imperial orders placed at Yixing during the second half of the Qianlong period.

Yixing bottles made for the court might have inspired the ordering of copies from Jingdezhen from around 1763 on, then. That still leaves us with a fairly broad dating range for this bottle, for although the initial urge to imitate an exciting new type at Jingdezhen might well follow immediately upon receiving the Yixing prototype, it is also possible that the urge (and/or the actual orders) happened many years later. Indeed, the unglazed interior discourages us from ascribing it to as early as the mid-1760s — although it must be reiterated that we have no clear indication of exactly when the shift from glazed to unglazed interiors began at Jingdezhen (discussed in Treasury 6, as a significant phenomenon in dating Jingdezhen porcelain snuff bottles).

Ambiguity often arises in distinguishing glazes from enamels on finished ceramics, since both are forms of glass and they are very closely related. This piece illustrates the problem. The monochrome ground beneath the gold enamel decoration might be reasonably identified as a brown glaze. Wear at the lip, however, reveals that beneath the silvery-brown colour is a colourless glaze, indicating that the bottle was first glazed, then covered with brown enamel.

The stopper here may well be the original. If not, it is an original eighteenth-century, palace-workshops stopper of a type that occurs on a range of imperial snuff bottles. It is distinguished by the heavily gilt bronze collar and finial, the latter being on a threaded dowel that goes through the cabochon and into the collar to hold the cabochon in place. We know from the imperial Archives (see Treasury 6, Chronological List for 1743, eleventh month, twenty-first day) that bottles were sometimes ordered without stoppers, which were to be made at the palace workshops once the bottles arrived in Beijing. There are references to stoppers being made separately even as early as the Yongzheng reign. (Also recorded in the archives, during 1727, for example, a total of 455 chased, gilt-bronze snuff bottle stoppers, complete with ivory spoons, were ordered see Treasury 6, Chronological List) The present bottle is one of those cases in which the stopper is of the correct type, fits perfectly, and looks ideal, allowing us the rare opportunity of proposing that it may be the original, even though it is of a different material.

The poem, one of the thousands written by the Qianlong emperor throughout his adult life, reads:

From the end of the sky comes a tiny boat
Arriving in an instant at the rush-grown cove.
Pagoda and monastery: sound of the evening bell;
The traveller's boat: rain the whole night through.

For a related bottle, of the same shape but decorated in iron red with chrysanthemums and an imperial poem, see Sin, Hui, and Kwong, 1996, no. 90, and for another, also of this shape and with a remarkably similar frame of leiwen, Wen Guihua 2006, p. 219, nos. 224-226, where the poem is dated to 1777, endorsing our view that the present example dates from the second half of the reign.


宜興的感召力

瓷胎，無色釉上施金彩與黎色琺瑯彩；平面唇、微凸長方形足；腹兩面飾雷紋開光，一面開光內繪江南山水，湖上有房舍，一座空亭，其後有五座小山，另一面題五言古詩一首，詩前金彩描繪"乾隆御題"，其後描繪篆體金地"乾"一印、篆體金文"隆"一印，頸部和兩側繪有金彩卷枝花紋；足有一行四字金彩 "乾隆年製"四字篆款；唇塗金彩，釉延及口內，而壺內不施釉

景德鎮官窯，1760～1799
高：5.12厘米
口經/唇經：0.54/1.59 厘米
蓋：孔雀石，描金銅頂飾、描金座
狀態敘述：因為蓋的搖擺，不施釉唇上的描金輕微減削，因累年觸摸，壺面亦有微不足道的磨損；一般相對的狀態：意外的優良

來源：
克立德珍藏 (1987)
佳士德，倫敦，1997年6 月14日，拍賣號98
Hugh M. Moss Ltd, 倫敦，1971
Margaret Prescott Wise
Edgar and Roberta Wise
Robert Kleiner (1995)
文獻：
冼祖謙、許建勳、鄺溥銘 1996，編號 93
《國際中國鼻煙壺協會的學術期刊》Journal of the International Chinese Snuff Bottle Society, 1998年秋期、頁17 ，圖55、頁18，圖55a
Treasury 6, 編號1158

說明：
棕色地以金彩畫圖案的煙壺為數不多，向來被視為模仿描金金屬胎的；但它們的啟發點大概是宜興描金紫砂器，如拍賣品號90（Treasury 6, 編號1447）。以前，大家以為紫砂鼻煙壺大多數是到十九世紀才有的，而十九世紀以前的一般是描金的瓷器。 現在了解到書"癸未製"的拍賣品號90是1763 作的而不是1823年作的，加上最近發表的故宮收藏的一系列帶乾隆款的宜興器，可以證明乾隆後半期宜興已經在製御用品。

就本壺來說，宜興1763年左右製的模範很可能會引起景德鎮官窯的反應，但是不是立即發生的反應，就很難說了。因為腹內不施釉，我們不太願意承認它是1760年代作的；同時，我們要再一次重申景德鎮窯到底甚麼時候開始放棄腹內施釉的常規也並不明確。

琺瑯彩與釉都是玻璃屬，所以在成器上有時難以辨別。本壺是很好的例子：要說金彩下的單色地是黎色釉，好像是適當的，但唇沿的磨損就表露，黎草色一層之下還有無色釉，意味著壺胎是先施釉再塗黎色琺瑯彩的。

本壺的蓋子很可能是原件。要不然，它還是屬於十八世紀多種宮廷製品常帶的蓋子的一類型。它的特點包括座與頂飾描金較厚，頂飾固定在帶螺紋的銷釘上。據宮廷檔案，作煙壺常常不作蓋（參見Treasury 6, 頁102、103等），煙壺運到京師後才配蓋子。早在雍正時期就有記錄提到煙壺和蓋子分開作的情況（參見Treasury 6, 頁78）。

冼祖謙、許建勳、鄺溥銘 1996, 編號90 是同形的，以鐵紅彩和御製詩繪飾； 文桂華2006， 頁219，編號224–226也是同樣的型式，雷紋很像，題1777年作的一首詩，這就是本壺作於乾隆後半期的旁證。