Yellow glass overlay

[YT]

Dear all,

Sharing a rare bottle with plain-Yellow glass overlaid on a swirled-yellow glass body. Pear-shaped body form with an unusual square neck, deep recessed footrim.

Front and back overlay is carved with a different front facing 'Mang' dragon while the side is carved with a pendant and a string of coins.
A distinction was drawn between the five-clawed dragon (long) and the four-clawed dragon (mang), which represented Favoured Princes or specially bestowed lower ranks.
Dated: 18th/19th Century
Provenance:
A Private West Coast Collection;
Sotheby's New York, April 6, 1990 Lot 51;
A Private San Francisco Collection;
Bonham's SF, 24 June 2014, Fine Chinese Work of Art

Cheers,
YT

[Fiveroosters aka clayandbrush]

Dear YT,
nice bottle, thank you for showing it, but I have some perplexities.
With the premise that I am here to learn, so I will be very glad if somebody will tell me that I am wrong and why:
First, I am not sure that it is an overlay. If so, the foot too should be plain yellow and not swirled yellow. My feeling is that the whole bottle is of the same type of glass, with a random swirling more or less concentrated depending on the area.
Second, is the dating correct? If it was dated to modern and high quality, would someone say that that is wrong, the bottle is clearly old? The type of carving doesn’t look that of 18th century to me. But again, I am here to learn.
And what about the stoppers? If they are a later, properly made addition, then no problem. But if they have been found as original by the auction house then I have high suspicion there.
I would add that I have seen some porcelain sold by Bonhams SF which description, attribution and so on was totally wrong even for a not so much expert. Incredibly wrong.
I am interested to hear others and once again, I will be happy if proved that I am wrong.
Kind regards
Giovanni

[YT]

Dear Giovanni,

I am happy that you raised up your points. If this is about Bonhams SF then you don't have to doubt further.
The 1750-1820 dating comes from the 1990 Sotheby's NY Fine Chinese Snuff Bottle. See attached catalog picture.

As for the overlay, I have used a 15X loupe and the top over-layer is plain yellow glass that is slightly more opaque. While the main body is made up of swirled light to dark yellow transparent glass.

Cheers,
YT

[Pat - 查尚杰]

YT

Nice bottle but no overlay, I agree with Giovanni.  It is imitating Baltic Amber.  Love the bottle but dislike the stopper. 

[YT]

Dear Pat and Giovanni,

Thank you, I will have to bring out the bottle and study it again.

As for the stopper, I am not in a country where these are so readily available. Maybe a trip to Thailand with all the measurements will do the trick.

Cheers,
YT

[Pat - 查尚杰]

Thanks for sharing it with us.  What I meant on the stopper is that I feel it is not a good fit to the size of the mouth.  It baffles me that some people pay thousands for a bottle and then put the wrong size on causing an ill fit and taking away from the beauty of the bottle. 

As to Thailand being a good source for stoppers, don't get your hopes up.  Tom L and I have discussed this several times and the sources are drying up.  Probably Myanmar or Laos, even Cambodia are still better sources

[YT]

First, I am not sure that it is an overlay. If so, the foot too should be plain yellow and not swirled yellow. My feeling is that the whole bottle is of the same type of glass, with a random swirling more or less concentrated depending on the area.

Dear Giovanni,

Attached are two 18th/19th Century glass overlay bottles. Footrim and body with same colours. I have posted the first bottle under the three colours glass overlay but not the second bottle which has Bloch provenance.

Your questions are similar to what I have been questioning myself too. Thank you.

Cheers,
YT

[Pat - 查尚杰]

YT

In case of the bottles you posted, the additional layers were carved away to reach the core of the bottle which is the white. Following that fact, you may actually be right that 2 layers of different yellow were used in your bottle.   As to why exactly that was done, i am guessing that they wanted the carving to stand out better which would have been more difficult with the swirled yellow.

[YT]

Dear Pat,

Thank you for the stopper information. Thailand is much more accessible to me as my wife loves shopping there

As for the overlay assumption, I may need a few days to get that bottle and look again.

Cheers,
YT

[Fiveroosters aka clayandbrush]

Dear YT,
thank you for taking my notes in the right way. I forgot to say, at the end of my notes, that many times pictures are deceiving. You have the bottle in hands and you can judge it much better.
I too found strange that an overlay is done in a very similar color, normally the color is more contrasting. Anyway, the bottle is very nice.
Kind regards
Giovanni

[rpfstoneman]

Hummmmm!!!!  Square bottle mouths are often a tough match to get square collars and stones.   Charll

[Joey Silver / Si Zhouyi 義周司]

Dear YT,

    I will wait to see the bottle 'live' before making a decision. The carving looks good, etc.
Charll is right that square bottles are especially hard to stopper, since our spare stoppers tend to be round, like most of our bottles' necks.

    I used to get stoppers from YF Yang, who presumably got them from Hong Kong and PRC craftsmen.
Jill (Guo Jie) supplies very nice modern stoppers in my opinion (though I believe Pat and Tom L don't like them).
Tom L, his wife Nant and I met Hugh Moss by chance in the Italian restaurant at the Sukkhothai Hotel in Bangkok, where by coincidence we both were staying. He was treating a young woman to dinner, and explained that she was working for his stopper supplier in Bangkok.

    I wonder if there is anyone close enough to Moss to get the name of his stopper supplier in Bangkok?
Best,
Joey

[Steven]

Dear YT,

Thanks for sharing! I like this bottle very much, the carving is very impressive, the dragon it very powerful specially with yellow color.

Steven

[YT]

Dear Charll,

Thank you, I almost forgot about the neck shape being square. The current stopper may have to be there for a longer period then.


Dear Joey,

Any spies near 'him'!?
Have a great time at the convention on the 27th...


Dear Steven,

Glad to share. The opinions I gather here are unbiased which allows me to be stricter in my database. Be true to myself in order to improve own's taste.

Cheers,
YT