Description
Description: Chinese snuff bottle carved out from a solid block of lavender blue glass. There are two qilins carved in high relief on the shoulders, which tails are interlaced to form the foot of the bottle. This is a very rare bottle, read References and Notes here below.
Foot/base: very narrow flat base, foot formed by the tails of the qilins
Mark: Unmarked
Dating: 18th
Material: Glass.
Size: 51 mm high
Stopper: Agate with red glass collar, bone spoon
Provenance: See the Provenance of glass bottle G35
References: Only one reference found, from the Bloch collection and sold by Sotheby’s HK on 2015. Another similar bottle, although bigger (63mm high), but carved from a solid block of transparent light blue glass imitating aquamarine, originally belonging from the Goldney Collection, is on sale at a prominent snuff bottle dealer.
Notes: The Author of the Description of the reference bottle says that the bottle is probably carved out by a solid block of glass, although he can’t say it for sure. This is a common problem in snuff bottles field, where many bottles are believed to be carved from solid block, while instead they are not. Actually, bottles carved by solid blocks are rarer than what is believed. This and the glass bottle G57 are so far the only ones that we have in our collection. There is a simple way to determine without doubts if a bottle is blown or carved out by a solid block; it is simply matter of lighting the inside by introducing a mini-LED through the opening and inspecting the light reflection on the inner surface through the same opening. The texture of the surface of a blown glass bottle is unmistakable, easily distinguishable even from a well-polished glass surface. In the case of this bottle, the inside surface has the same roughness of the stone bottles. Then this bottle is carved out from a solid block of glass, and the same is almost surely true for the reference bottle.
Of the images attached, those after that of the sale of the reference bottle are showing that bottle, alone or compared in the same scaled size to this one. In one picture we can see that the thickness of the two bottles is about the same, but we can also see that the carving of the qilins on the reference bottle is in less relief, i.e. it is less deeply carved. That means that the carver of that bottle had more space available for the hollowing. The description say also that the bottle is carved until about 7 mm from the foot. All this is telling how skilled was the carver of our bottle, considering that on a total thickness of about 7 mm, the hollowing space was very reduced due to the deepest carving of the animals, and considering that the hollowing is total and not partial as in the reference bottle. In fact, despite being a bit taller, the bottle is hollowed until 3.6 mm from the foot, instead of the 7 mm of the reference bottle. Being the foot 1.4 mm tall, the bottom of the base is only 2.2 mm. The quality of the hollowing is also evidenced by the picture where the bottle is lighted from the inside.
It is worth to mention that, as explained in the description of our glass bottle G57, the reason for carving out bottles from solid blocks of glass is that of obtaining bottles imitating those carved out from gem stones like aquamarine, beryllium, or ruby as the mentioned bottle G57. Thus, they were carved from transparent or semitransparent glasses, allowing the visibility of the inner carving. As such, it is not clear the reason why this and the only reference bottle from the Bloch collections were carved out from solid blocks of opaque glasses.
The Description of the reference bottle is suggesting that that bottle was the only known one, but we know now that there are at least two known. This, added to the fact that these are the only known ones carved from opaque glass solid blocks, makes these two bottles extremely rare.
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