The Amazing Three Layers

[richy88]

When collecting stone bottles, the ultimate goal is to get a bottle made from a perfect stone. These bottles are normally left uncarved to appreciate its natural beauty at its fullest.

However, many a times, this is not true. Stones by nature have many "impurities" in them and sometimes even a mixture of more than one materials in them. (George can advise on this one!)

Therefore, the artist has deliberately and brilliantly, took advantage of natural flaws and inclusions often found in these stones and compose them to the design of the bottle.

Among those most interesting are those that have more than one layer of skin on them. The artist then will have to carefully carve out the right depth to bring out the different coloured layer to be part of the design. This type of workmanship is truly amazing to me.

Shown here is a smoky quartz (crystal) bottle with a clear base carved with two coloured skin, the white layer in between carved as leaves and the top grey layer used to carved as the grapes and squirrel.

It is one of my favourite bottles.

 
      

        

[George]

A beauty !!

[richy88]

Another agate bottle with three layers.

The base is in light coffee brown translucent in colour while the middle layer is white carved with two horses under a pine tree and the top greyish brown layer is carved with two monkeys on top of a horse. Height: 68 mm.

The design with the rebus "Ma Shang Feng Hou" (马上封侯) which means "May you be promoted to the rank of Marquis immediately" is an auspicious expression to wish someone speedy success.

In Chinese, the word Ma is Horse (马) and Hou (侯) sounds like Monkey (猴) and hence this design has the underlying meaning of this auspicious greeting.
 

[richy88]

Another three layer bottle with the same theme as my previous post except that there is an addition of a bee next to the horse in the design. The pronunciation for bee in Chinese (蜂) is similar to Feng (封), therefore adding more direct meaning to the rebus "Ma Shang Feng Hou" (马上封侯).

The horse is carved using the white middle layer skin with another top layer in brown carved as the saddle and a ball depicting the Tai Ji design on top with a bee in black, its eyes picked out in white on the side.

The other side carved using the dark skin as a pine tree with a lighter layer carved as a monkey beneath the tree. Height: 65 mm.

This bottle is also a Suzhou School example with all the inclusions used in the stone to be part of the overall design.