Dear Samson & of course, Inn Bok,
All right, so, no pressure then... Thank G-D !
Dear, Dear Inn Bok,
It is a beautiful piece of Nephrite Jade. Which is its first problem.
From 1710, the aging Kangxi Emperor lost control over the periphery, and that included, first and foremost, Khotan, the source of the best nephrite. Till 1759, when General Zhaohui reconquered it for the Qianlong Emperor. Notice that this period (ca.1710-1759) includes the whole of the Yongzheng reign (1722-1735).
The carving is not at all like that of the early-mid 18th C. And it is very high relief. Another mark against it.
The shape is all wrong and, moreover, would be very hard to use anywhere but left on a table as a scholar's ornament; but is not 'right' for that either. And the neck is too short, in relation to the bottle.
The mark looks superb, but the correct marks have been known since 1986 at least, thanks to the late Robert Kleiner's serious research on Qing reign marks when he worked for Sotheby's London's Chinese Dept. in the late 1970s/1980s.
If the bottle had been a flattened spade-shaped flask, with a gently flared neck, and with the qilong and phoenix carved in low relief, and that mark, all in a piece of really 'cruddy' nephrite, and had the proper wear (patina), I would have had to work a lot harder; or said it was 'right'.
Oh, by the way, most Qianlong marked Jades I've seen, primarily all those in the collections of a certain 2 HK collectors, one sadly demised, are fake. They demanded 'reign marked' examples, and the dealers, including well-known UK dealers, were happy to accommodate them, for a premium. And ditto with all their reign marked glass examples.
I was collecting a lot longer than the two gents from HK (15-18 years longer), and was searching out glass bottles with incised marks a lot earlier than them, and I succeeded in finding #2 and #12 in my 1987 catalogue, my Yuzhi marked overlay from the Schoen collection, and 3 marked examples from Marion Mayer's famous glass collection, so 6 examples between 1970 and 1992.
I've seen 7 examples in glass, and 3 in Jade, with 'Wan Yu Xuan' ["Studio of Refined Amusement"], the 5th Prince Ding's personal Studio in the Forbidden City, during the early-mid 19th C. I've seen at least a dozen, if not double that, of jade bottles with obscure Studio names; I've owned a bottle with Qianlong Nianzhi (doubtless stolen by Eunuchs after 1911 but before 1924 when they were expelled from the Forbidden City), and still own one with only a tiny part of the 'Qian' character visible (probably stolen by Eunuchs between the 1890s and 1910, when the mark would have been ground off since if caught with a marked Imperial treasure meant an extremely slow and extremely painful death for all concerned).
I'm sorry. It is a beautiful object, but most probably made between 1990 and a few months before you first saw it.
Best,
Joey
Dear Inn Bok,
Thank you for sharing your jade bottle. Indeed, as you mentioned, the fact that it's incised "Yongzheng Nian Zhi" is rather interesting. The Yongzheng reign mark seems rare on jade bottles, at least I haven't seen one since I first started the hobby a year or so ago.
I also agree that the length of the neck seems slightly disproportionate with rest of the bottle.
Joey is the man to turn our heads up to when it comes to jade bottles. Let's see what he has to say.
Best,
Samson
