Custom Embellishment on Gem Bottles

[guest537]

Apart from the value of a bottle, the top can sometimes have a value equal to the bottle. I have personally embellished some bottles to meet my personal tastes, and in some cases found them that way. Here are photos to share with you of such embellishments.

[George]

Is the one bottle Quartz ? 

[guest537]

Yes, and in a classic pattern. The bottle was not damaged, in some cases people try to enhance damaged bottles. I have a number of these kinds of bottles, and I am a metal worker, I wanted to do something with the bottle.

[George]

Yes, and in a classic pattern. The bottle was not damaged, in some cases people try to enhance damaged bottles. I have a number of these kinds of bottles, and I am a metal worker, I wanted to do something with the bottle.

I taught myself how to do some silversmithing and did something similar with a bottle. It was damaged. I did not create anything as ornate as yours !  Just a simple collar .

I did make some pretty nice jewelry.. I remember purchasing a super nice AAA grade lapis necklace and earring set from you.

[guest537]

In my day, I sold some wonderful stuff. Some more cheap at times when I needed extra money. Its an art to find ways to make bottles with defects look like something. The guy that did mine just passed away at 95. He engraved Buddha cases for 60 years. He was a very good silver worker and craftsman. His wife passed away in his 80s, he became a monk. He spent a month at my home before he became more ill. Sometimes very good times pass us by and we don't realize how good them times were.

[Jungle Jas]

I like the bottles, especially the first. However for me the tops detract from the bottles. In my humble opinion they don't  need such ornate tops. I can however appreciate the workmanship. 

[Wattana]

I like the very first bottle in this thread, with the dragon wrapped around the neck. It makes the stopper relate (quite dramatically) with the subject matter of the bottle below. I also like the third bottle (Sodalite?), which has the floral motif continued onto the silver collar/stopper.

As a concept (decorative continuity between bottle and stopper) this opens up a whole new realm of possibilities. It could be refined so as to actually continue a common theme across from one to the other. Beautiful as it is, I don't quite see what the dragon has to do with the two scholars sitting under the tree.

The only thing I have seen before which comes close to this was in Mongolia, where the gold collar, and sometimes the spoon too, is decorated to continue the decorative theme on the bottle.

Thanks for sharing!   

[guest537]

This is a Lapis Bottle I believe.

I think to have everything relate on a bottle, you would have to go to a master of the arts.
Remember, these are $25 - $50 bottles at best. Most workers will have a limited education, and some will be taught by other bottle workers. Then people must have talent. Its the same as art school. A lot of people go to art school, but very few will be artists. Some may have had talent before they went to art school. Even so, there is more often than not a very limited income in being an artist. Silver workers in Asia made $10 or less a day for years. Its a skill, but not a high paid skill.
I have a very strong art background, and used to send people running out of the room crying in art critiques. In the end, all of that stuff really don't matter much. And I gave up art a few days after I graduated. I realized I did not want to have to run around in my truck trying to sell stuff at shows. Just not my kind of life back then. Art was fun for just something to do for fun. I try to appreciate bottles as some "Thing" that somebody created for "Some reason". You have to think what it takes to tear into a piece of stone and make a bottle. I suspect out of so many bottles, a few turn out very good. Then selling them to get some real value is not so easy. As much as I thought I was an artist, I am really not an artist, but I turned out to be a good appreciator of art, or what I perceive to be art. That is much different than I was taught, and..... its more easy to have an eye for art than to bear the burden of being an artist, if there is such a thing.

[Fiveroosters aka clayandbrush]

Dear Monkomgmee,
please don’t take this as personal, I am just referring to what you said about Art, artists, and appreciating art. It all depends on our culture, which evidently has his influence on the matter. May be it is just matter of difference between a Western eye/culture and an Oriental one. To my eyes, frankly, what is shown above is simply horrible, I would not call that embellishment, on the contrary. Once again, nothing personal. I want to express my point of view because I am convinced that the different opinion is not belonging from a different taste, but from cultural difference behind the eyes of the observer instead. I am not an expert in Art or appreciator of Art as you are claiming to be, so the different point of view must belong just from different culture.
Kind regards
Giovanni