Footnotes

Treasury 6, no. 1311


瓷胎紫褐色帶子上潮鼻煙壺
景德鎮官窯，鐵紅道光年款， 1821～1850


Imperial Pink

Ruby-pink, iron-red, and gold enamels on colourless glaze on porcelain; with a flat lip and recessed flat foot surrounded by a protruding convex footrim; painted with a continuous design of an imperial five-clawed dragon chasing a flaming pearl surrounded by flames and bubbles of water from the formalized waves below, from which a second imperial five-clawed dragon emerges; the foot inscribed in iron red seal script Da Qing Daoguang nian zhi (Made during the Daoguang period of the Qing dynasty); the lip, inner neck, and interior glazed; the lip painted with gold enamel
Imperial kilns, Jingdezhen, 1821–1850
Height: 6.8 cm
Mouth/lip: 0.59/1.22 cm
Stopper: gold enamel on colourless glaze on porcelain; moulded with a formalized floral design; John Charlton, London, circa 1972
Condition: gold enamel on lip and footrim mostly worn away; slight wear to ruby enamel on the back of the bottle at the dragon's claw at the centre. General relative condition: excellent. Some of the gilding on the porcelain stopper worn


Illustration: watercolour by Peter Suart

Provenance:
Ko Collection
Christie's, London, 12 June 1972, lot 37
Alice B. McReynolds
Sotheby's, New York, 16 April 1985, lot 6

Published:
Kleiner 1995, no. 216
Treasury 6, no. 1311

Exhibited:
British Museum, London, June–October 1995
Israel Museum, Jerusalem, July–November 1997

Commentary
There are some magnificent ceramics from the Qianlong imperial kilns painted with this ruby-pink on a white ground, as well as some painted enamels on metal and glass from the palace workshops (see for instance the narrow-side panels of Treasury 6, nos. 1070 and 1071), and although no snuff bottles with ruby-pink designs combined with Jiaqing reign marks readily spring to mind, the combination was continued into the Daoguang reign, evidenced here and on Treasury 6, no. 1312. The reason for its popularity is obvious, so much so that the famille rose palette of the Qing dynasty was named after this colour although it was only one of a wide range introduced at the same time to augment the traditional palette.

This elegant shape is first seen in the late Qianlong period, when enamelled dragon designs were also popular. The painting is spirited, although the rear legs of the upper dragon suffer from typically nineteenth-century decorative devolution (see under Treasury 6, no. 1305) but the heads of both beasts retain the spirit and vitality of their predecessors and are as finely depicted as any, with a good deal more individual character than most. The condition is almost straight from the kiln, although the gold enamel on the lip is predictably worn from contact with the stopper over nearly two centuries. This idea of painting the lips of porcelain bottles with gold enamel arose out of the early influence on Jingdezhen snuff-bottle designs of palace enamelling on metal. For example, Treasury 6, no. 1150, the extraordinary early-Qianlong example from the Tang Ying group, is obviously intended to imitate a palace enamel on metal in every way except the body material. It even has the rare, early-style additional raised band of gold around the lower neck. Gradually, painting both footrim and lip gold became a standard part of porcelain snuff-bottle production. Then, as the art of porcelain began to reveal its own possibilities, the original reason for the gilt detail began to fade, and the gold foot was dropped. Only the gilt lip survived as standard into the Daoguang period. It was a somewhat short-sighted conservatism, however; the lip of a bottle takes even more of a beating in daily use than the footrim, and every time the stopper is twisted into place or pulled out again there is likely to be abrasion between collar and lip. Even thickly gilt metal lips lose their gold after prolonged use, and the weak gold enamel of the famille rose palette fared far less well. It is understandable if a first generation of potters failed to realize that gold painted lips would not survive for long, but once the next generation saw the state of earlier bottles, we might expect that they would learn and move to correct the problem. Instead of coming to the easier conclusion that they did not need to gild the lip any longer, they took to adding a wash of brown glaze to the lip to stand in for the gold after it had worn off. This begins in the late-Qianlong period and is standard on Jiaqing bottles. By the Daoguang reign one might expect them to have learned, but all they did was drop the brown wash and accept that gold lips are susceptible to wear. Perhaps they had already seen the commercial possibilities of planned obsolescence, but, in any case, it seems that the gold lip was so deeply embedded in Jingdezhen design consciousness by the Daoguang period that it was not about to be easily dislodged.

The reign mark here is written in iron-red, and it is fortunate that it is hidden beneath the foot, since it clashes with the pink. As usual, it is a well-written mark, and perhaps no attempt was made to substitute ruby-pink because it is harder to control in a confined space; a six-character mark already made special demands on the artisan's ability to compress the characters without undue loss of definition. Generally speaking, mark-writers at the imperial kilns in the Daoguang period had almost no practice at writing with pink enamel and very little with blue enamel; most marks were written in either underglaze-blue, or iron-red. A very similar bottle, although with a different foot, remains in the imperial collection in Beijing (Li Jiufang 2002, no. 370), and a closely related cylindrical version is in Robert Kleiner & Company 1990, no. 123.

For the significance of this subject, see Treasury 6, no. 1177.


官窯弱紫羅蘭色

瓷胎，無色釉上施桃紅、鐵紅、金琺瑯彩；平唇、斂平底、突出凸形圈足；繪通體五爪戲火珠龍，隙地繪火焰紋，底邊飾波濤紋，有一小龍行走其間；底有鐵紅"大清道光年製"六字篆款；唇、頸內壁、腹內壁皆施釉，唇塗金琺瑯彩

景德鎮官窯， 1821～1850
高：6.8 厘米
口經/唇經：0.59/1.22 厘米
蓋：陶瓷，無色釉上施金琺瑯彩，模印形式化花朵；John Charlton 作，倫敦，約1972年
狀態敘述：唇與圈足之金琺瑯彩幾乎擦光了，大龍後左爪之中心有所磨損；一般相對的狀態：極善；蓋子上的描金有所磨損

有彼德小話 (Peter Suart) 水彩畫

來源：
克立德珍藏
佳士得，倫敦，1972年6 月12日，拍賣品號37
Alice B. McReynolds
蘇富比，紐約，1985年4月16日，拍賣品號6
文獻﹕
Kleiner 1995，編號216
Treasury 6， 編號1311
展覽﹕
大英博物館, 倫敦, 1995年6月～10月
Israel Museum, 耶路撒冷, 1997年7月～11月

說明：
乾隆時期畫桃紅彩的瓷器存有很絢麗的，金屬胎與玻璃胎的也有。我們一時想不出帶嘉慶年款的桃紅圖案鼻煙壺，但本壺證明，瓷胎桃紅畫飾的瓷器到了道光期還很受歡迎。就本壺的典雅形式來說，它初見於乾隆晚年，那時琺瑯龍紋也很流行。本壺的龍畫得蓬蓬勃勃，只是上邊的一隻之後兩腳呈現十九世紀典型的裝飾化。

景德鎮瓷胎煙壺唇上施金彩的設計是受宮廷風金屬胎方式的影響的。當初是唇與圈足越來越多都施金彩，後來，為了發揮瓷器特具的性質就不塗飾圈足了，而唇上施金彩一直到道光時期仍是約定俗成的標準。這種守舊主義稱得上逆行倒施，因為唇上的金彩，特別是粉彩比較薄弱的金彩，易受蓋座磨擦的影響。從乾隆後期開始，唇上加了薄層的棕色彩為輔，金彩磨掉後，還有所代替。到了嘉慶時期，這個作法成為煙壺的規則，而降及道光時期，琺瑯工不但沒有放棄塗飾唇的習慣，卻放棄了棕色彩的輔助而繼續塗金彩。是守舊主義還是人家已經悟出了計劃報廢的有利？由讀者來判斷吧。

本壺的年款是鐵紅寫的，不太配合壺腹畫的桃紅色，但在狹窄的空間中書六字底款已經不容易，道光官窯習熟用釉下青花或鐵紅寫年款，要求琺瑯匠用不容易控制的桃紅粉彩來寫有點過分。

故宮珍藏收有底足外很相似的一件鼻煙壺，參見李久芳2002，編號370。Robert Kleiner & Company 1990， 編號123，是相關的圓筒狀的樣式。