2 plain bottles, are they too plain ?

[Joey Silver / Si Zhouyi 義周司]

Dear Guys,
 
    Never thought I would be the one saying TMI! 

HaHaHa,
Joey

[forestman]

Just thought I would add some research because if Joey says he thinks my yellow bottle could be Imperial and 18th Century then who am I to argue 

There is an often seen quote that in 1770 Jesuits missionaries who visited the Imperial Glassworks said that "Many vases were made every year, all of which required great labour as nothing was blown".

This fits with a 1760 reference to the Quinlong Emperor noting there were no missionaries who could blow glass left. Perhaps the last two working there were d'Incarville and Brossard who died in 1757 and 1758.

In 1775 Amiot noted "The Emperor has not assigned apprentices to the Europeans, nor has he transferred glassworkers from Canton".

Sometime in the Jiaqing reign (1796-1820) glass blowers were recruited from Boshan to the Imperial glassworks.

There is another reference from 1814 that glassmaking in Beijing did not include any melting but was solely a fabrication of objects from glass ingots from Boshan.

So there was a period of up to 54 years where bottles don't appear to have been blown at the Imperial glassworks.

Yellow glass is mentioned as a colour being made in 1705 by Wang Shizhen and was an Imperial colour.

There were shades of yellow produced with one shade reserved for the Emperor and various other shades used by lesser people in court.

There are also quotes that suggest a lot of the output of the Imperial glassworks was for quite plain bottles as so much was made as gifts and rewards. Yongzheng's favourite concubine was shown in a painting with a plain ruby red flattened glass snuff bottle. He was said to like ruby red and purple (grape) coloured glass bottles but used a sapphire blue one himself.

Glass was expensive to produce until later in the 1800's and was treated as a gemstone and worked like one because it held a special appeal to the Chinese because of it properties in being able to be opaque like jade and also translucent and transparent.

Regards, Adrian. 

[George]

That is one nice post and research Adrian...

It is taking me a minute to digest it all..

I know you have recently purchased a few books related to glass.. I think some are same as mine.. Can you reference which books you used.. ?  No need to go into exact pages etc.. Just the books..
 

[forestman]

Hi George,

As you say I have been buying more books than snuff bottles of late so I have gone through them all and taken notes, initially relating to glass bottles, and have re written it all in date order and while I was noting the authors initials by the information as more books have arrived I have lost track a little.

I think it's important, not just for me but if I quote anything here, to give a source and, with time, can give a source for each quote but "Pure Brightness Shines Everywhere, The Glass of China" provided a lot of information. I had it on order when you recommended it and ordered "The Medicine Snuff Bottle Connection" after you recommended it.

Some of the more recently published books seem to be getting new information from the 1000 plus volumes of books relating to production of Imperial wares that are in the Palace museum in Beijing and from what I understand are still being worked through to gather new information. For instance "Snuff Bottles in the Qing Dynasty" by Zhang Rong was published in late 2010 and lists numerous Chinese enamel painters from different dynasties which may have been recently unearthed.

Regards, Adrian.

[George]

For instance "Snuff Bottles in the Qing Dynasty" by Zhang Rong was published in late 2010 and lists numerous Chinese enamel painters from different dynasties which may have been recently unearthed.

Regards, Adrian.

Thank you for this Adrian... I just found and ordered a copy

[Fiveroosters aka clayandbrush]

Dear Joey,
what is TMI? Sorry I didn’t get it.
Dear Joey, can you please explain why do you think that Adrian’s bottle is Imperial? Is there some reason or have you already seen an identical one, classified as Imperial? I am very interested in knowing that, because I can’t see a reason for that.
Dear Adrian, do you mean that in China they didn’t know about glass blowing technology in the 18th century? I have three glass snuff bottles, surely 18th century, one being the ruby red shown in this same thread, which are blown.
Also, why do you call your bottle as yellow? You can call it amber, brownish, or what else, but it is far from yellow. At least in the pictures posted, I see no hints of yellow.
I remain with my idea, that in the snuff bottles field, the word “Imperial” is quite abused. It may belong from a famous dealer who has a lot of interest in claiming his bottles as being Imperial.
Kind regards
Giovanni

[George]

I have to go back and search the books, but in the mean time, can you tell under magnification if the air bubbles in your bottle are circular or elongated ?

I remember something, but have to go find it...

[forestman]

Dear Giovanni,

I refer to the bottle as yellow because that's how I see it and how it was described in the auction. I'm not seeing any amber or brown in it. There are brighter yellows but I still see it as yellow.

What I am saying is that they seemed to rely on European missionaries to advance their glass technology and didn't seem to note how the Europeans worked and had problems when there were no missionaries to point the way.

As examples there were gifts made to Kangxi of aventurine glass in 1722 (last year of Kangxi) which was called "Gold star glass" by the Chinese and which they were very interested in. In 1723 (first year of Yongzheng) Prince Yi submitted snuff bottles in aventurine (and 5 colour glass and red glass decorated with enamels) to Yongzheng that were made in the Imperial glassworks having been told how to make it by missionaries. However in 1742 the French missionary Brossard wrote home to his sister asking to find out how to make aventurine glass and "yellow broom flower" glass (Imperial yellow ?), clearly no-one had noted how these were made. In 1748 he wrote home again asking about aventurine glass and learnt enough to then make it (The Palace museum have quite a few examples).

The Chinese had certainly been making mould blown glass prior to the snuff bottle period but didn't seem to know how to free blow it or roll it. China didn't use glass like we (Westerners ) did. They didn't have glass windows and few glass bottles as their bottles were mainly made of china. It seems that Stumpff might have introduced glass blowing to the Imperial workshop. After his death in 1720 he was described as being the first to introduce and teach glass making to the Court of Beijing. Having learnt how to blow glass they didn't teach any apprentices and lost the knowledge in the Imperial glassworks around 1760.

Chinese glass workers in Guangzhou (Canton) seemed to have learnt to make mirror and plate glass from French secular glassworkers who had been brought to China in 1699. They made plate and mirror glass by blowing very large glass vessels then cutting them into pieces and flattening them in furnaces but it seems this knowledge didn't reach Beijing prior to Stumpff's arrival there.

In 1793 it was written that the Canton artists collected broken European glass and re melted it and didn't seem to have any knowledge of how to make it from raw materials. In contrast to this Boshan had been producing it's own glass from local raw materials since at least 1370 in 10 different colours.

Regards, Adrian.

[forestman]

Hi George,

If you were asking me then I haven't found any bubbles in the yellow bottle and the one I think is a bubble in the clear bottle is round.

I remember something on the round/elongated bubbles from some post on the forum.

To get rid of bubbles in glass it has to reach a certain temperature and then be left for the bubbles to rise out of it. Brossard kept a diary and said the quality of coal supplied was very inconsistent so temperatures were hard to control which might explain why you see so many bubbles even in Imperial marked bottles. They controlled temperatures better when they burnt "banned" books (Chinese 50 shades of grey !) in the furnaces.

Logically I would think if you free blow glass any bubble would stretch evenly. If you contained the glass (by a mould or by other means) while blowing it then the bubbles would elongate.

Regards, Adrian.

[Fiveroosters aka clayandbrush]

Dear Adrian,
I don’t know the sources of your information and how reliable they are. May be they are fully reliable but it is important to know to what they are referring to. One of my 18th century bottles is aventurine and it is surely blown. You can see it here below. Even more, I do believe that all aventurine bottles are blown. Came on, do you really think that a carved aventurine glass could look the same way as it looks in this bottle? It is not possible. The aventurine inclusion will not be trapped between the two surfaces, it will surface itself. And it will not be so flat. It is logic, isn’t it?
In the second picture you can see your bottle next to a yellow one and a yellow and caramel one. I do not want to be polemic, but if in your opinion your bottle falls within the yellow range, well, I believe that it will be hard to find someone else with the same opinion. Unless the color accuracy of his monitor is far from being good.
Kind regards
Giovanni

[forestman]

Dear Giovanni,

I didn't say that aventurine glass bottles were not blown. They all are. I said they had difficulty in making them at some points in time. Separately to that I said there was a period when the Imperial glassworks didn't blow glass. The point I was making was how reliant the Chinese were on Europeans for learning about certain aspects of glass manufacture.

I have to correct the information I gave earlier in that it was d'Incarville not Brossard who wrote home to find out how to make aventurine and yellow broom flower colour. He did so in 1742 in a letter to his sister but didn't write again in 1748, that was the date he entrusted his journals to Russian travellers which is how the information surfaced as his journals were later published in Russia. Anatomy is what the Europeans added to glass to colour it like an Imperial yellow but d'Incarville reported that the Chinese weren't aware of it. This information is from "Pure brightness shines everywhere".

If I am alone in my opinion that my bottle is yellow then so be it  I call it "faded daffodil yellow" or the colour of snow that you shouldn't eat.

Regards, Adrian.

[Joey Silver / Si Zhouyi 義周司]

Dear Giovanni,

     'TMI' are the initials for "Too Much Information"! Especially of an intimate or scatological  (concerning human bodily waste) nature.  And usually I feel I'm the one giving TMI... although I try not to.

     Yes, I have seen bottles the same shape and shade of glass as Adrian's, reliably attributed to the Imperial Glassworks. It is a bit convoluted, so please bear with me. In the early 1980s, I was in NYC a lot. I met, through a Gay friend in the Arts in Toronto, also in NYC on a visit,  a big Asian Arts expert, Robert Ellsworth  and his lover Masa (Masaharu Hashiguchi [I think]. They took me out for sirloin steak to Donohue's Steak House, his favourite place to eat. When invited, I thought we'd go to Japanese or Chinese, but Mr. Ellsworth wanted to go to Donohue's. So we went to Donohue's. And he always (at least the 4 or 5 times I went out with them) gave a 20% tip, based on the post tax sum. I invited them out to Shun Lee Palace a few times, as well.
 
    One visit, Mr. Ellsworth took me to meet an old Chinese lady who lived in a very fine pre-War apt., and who he said was a Qing princess. And she had bottles she claimed to have received from family, which came from the Palace Glassworks. And one looked like the amber glass example of Adrian's (I also don't think it is 'yellow'; but rather, 'amber-brown'; but wonder whether that is like the woman accused of 'only' being a strawberry blonde, in a Ginger shelter, in one of the Katherine Tate Show skits...  ).

    In any event, I asked him, after we left, if it would be appropriate for me to offer to buy any of her bottles (she had about 80, ostensibly all Imperial; and they had me convinced, I can tell you). He offered to discreetly suggest it, but nothing came of it. I saw Mr. Ellsworth a few more times, and then he never seemed available. But he was a busy man, so that may have been the reason. He did not have snuff bottles, but he had other wonderful Chinese stuff, lots of it Ming.
Best,
Joey

Dear Joey,
what is TMI? Sorry I didn’t get it.
Dear Joey, can you please explain why do you think that Adrian’s bottle is Imperial? Is there some reason or have you already seen an identical one, classified as Imperial? I am very interested in knowing that, because I can’t see a reason for that.
Dear Adrian, do you mean that in China they didn’t know about glass blowing technology in the 18th century? I have three glass snuff bottles, surely 18th century, one being the ruby red shown in this same thread, which are blown.
Also, why do you call your bottle as yellow? You can call it amber, brownish, or what else, but it is far from yellow. At least in the pictures posted, I see no hints of yellow.
I remain with my idea, that in the snuff bottles field, the word “Imperial” is quite abused. It may belong from a famous dealer who has a lot of interest in claiming his bottles as being Imperial.
Kind regards
Giovanni

[Fiveroosters aka clayandbrush]

Wow,
thank you very much dear Joey. Live and learn!
Kind regards
Giovanni

[Pat - 查尚杰]

Thought I would share this interesting summary of research about Chinese glass:

http://www.iias.asia/sites/default/files/IIAS_NL53_37.pdf

[George]

Thought I would share this interesting summary of research about Chinese glass:

http://www.iias.asia/sites/default/files/IIAS_NL53_37.pdf

More than interesting Pat !  Excellent link, and thank you... I have made it my home page so as to read through, research, and purchase the reference materials and books mentioned..

Love it !

[Pat - 查尚杰]

http://www.cmog.org/sites/default/files/collections/FB/FB60BC87-E3E0-45C9-B363-6A2B5BF87F55.pdf

http://tech.scichina.com:8082/sciEe/fileup/PDF/06ye0701.pdf

https://www.princeton.edu/~elman/documents/Jesuit_Role_as_Experts_in_High_Qing.pdf

https://journals.lib.washington.edu/index.php/JIPA/article/viewFile/14701/12346

https://www.metmuseum.org/pubs/bulletins/1/pdf/3269166.pdf.bannered.pdf

This should get the discussion thread juices flowing... lol

[Pat - 查尚杰]

This article suggests that the earliest archeological find of locally blown glass in China was A.D. 481, and does a decent job of explaining why glass was less important in China compared to elsewhere in the world:

http://www.alanmacfarlane.com/glass/ACHINA.pdf

[Fiveroosters aka clayandbrush]

Dear Pat,
yesterday I was going to do some research about glass making in China, but at the end I didn't because of lack of time. You did it, and you did a great job! Thank you, most interesting!
Kind regards
Giovanni

[Pat - 查尚杰]

Most welcome Giovanni! 

[George]

Thank you Pat !