Overlay glass

[Bottleinpocket]

Mid Qing Dynasty? Grasshopper overlay ( yellow & Green)
Attached is another overlay yellow & green glass bottle collected in forbidden City museum of beijing
Grant

[Wattana]

Hi Grant,

As always, a shot of the foot and the mouth opening will help ID.

Tom

[Joey Silver / Si Zhouyi 義周司]

Dear Grant,

    I'm sorry. I don't think either is genuine.

    What most people don't know or realise is, the vast majority of the Forbidden City's treasures in 1935, which means everything in the Imperial Collections till then (except stuff stolen and sold by the Eunuchs as their 'retirement plan', from the late 1890s till 1920, when the Palace became a museum and supervised, re. removal of treasures.  ), were removed to keep them out of the hands of the invading Japanese, who'd already occupied Manchuria, and put PuYi on the throne as a puppet ruler.

   The stuff (less the estimated 10% which dropped into the Yangze River gorges while being removed on donkeyback and on wagons), was removed to Nanjing, then Zhongqing in Suzhou, till the Japanese were stopped in 1945. Then it was all moved downriver to Shanghai, loaded onto ships, and kept on the ships in Taipei harbour till 1955, when the NATIONAL Palace Museum was built.

   It was kept on the ships till 1955, as an insurance policy: If the ChiComms (as the PRC cadres were 'lovingly' referred to at that time, by Republican Chinese and Americans) invaded Taiwan, as they'd threatened since 1949, the ships would be scuttled destroying China's historic cultural patrimony.

   By 1955, the building was built, the Americans were guaranteeing Taiwan's freedom (sorry, Territorial Integrity), and the PRC was much less of a threat.

   If you want to see genuine Imperial Chinese treasures, go to Taipei, or see collections of stuff looted from the YuanMingYuan in 1860, 1902, etc. by Western troops, and in Western museum collections.

  Whatever is in the Gegong today, and I viewed ALL of it in 1988, on my first visit, when Yang Boda, a very nice man, and a deputy curator at the time, tried to interest me in funding the Forbidden City's catalogue of snuff bottles.

  I surmise that the genuine Imperial bottles, and there are at least 50 such in the Gegong, were 'acquired' by the CCP from their private owners between 1949 and 1988 when I saw them. But most of the bottles, and I saw over 900 in the storeroom, were not only not Imperial; most were quite poor in quality.  I said to Mr. (Dr.?) Yang, that I could not find more than 150-170 worthy of being illustrated in a serious book on snuff bottles. After a really wonderful (pork-free and shellfish-free) banquet in the Gegong, which I was treated to after hosting Yang and 6 other staff from the Gegong at a banquet at the Diaoyutai State Guesthouse, where I was a (paying) guest at the time, the deal fizzled out.

  Best,
   Joey

[George]

Joey would know far better than I, and so can not comment on the second bottle from the museum..

I do agree though for the first bottle not being genuine.. Actually fairly modern..

[Bottleinpocket]

Thanx for your comments , joey and george
do you really think this bottle is brandnew?
attached you will find more pics about this bottle in details.
any ideas are welcomed.

Grant

[George]

Well I sure thought it was very new until I looked at this particular image..

The green in this image looks good for 18 century glass..

Hmmmm.....

[Steven]

Hi Grant,

Thank you for your close up photos.

It does look better than the before, altho the yellow color still looks wrong,( it might because of the lighting ). it should looks very creamy looking for 18th -19th yellow glass, chinese call it egg yolk yellow, it can be slightly different from different period, but all has a creamy looking, yours don't have, if you look at the one you posted from museum, the yellow color is more close to that. the carving does look not bad, also the green color is close as well.

The other thing you need to look is the hollowing, how is the bottle hollowed, how thick the wall its?

From what I can tell, it might not be brand new, but really not more than 50 years old.

Steven

[Joey Silver / Si Zhouyi 義周司]

Steven,
   You may be right that the lighting is throwing us off, but I still think it is totally modern.
Joey