Bottle ID: 142

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DRAGONS AND POEM

Date: 1750-1820

Height: 57 mm

Duanstone, inkstone (slate), of olive green tone, of flattened rounded form with shoulders sloping to a slightly everted mouth, and with a shallow oval footrim, carved in low relief with three archaic dragons, confronted to form the character “long”, (dragon), the reverse incised with a poetic inscription reading: "Duan Brook begets excellent material. More smooth and glossy than fine jade." and with a yuzhi mark (By Imperial Command), the shoulders with mock mask and ring handles.
Attributed to Duan.


 

Similar Examples:

Crane Collection no. 507
Crane Collection no. 93
Chinese Snuff Bottles from the Collection of Joseph Baruch Silver, Jerusalem, Israel, 1989, p. 21, no. 28.
Moss, Hugh, Victor Graham and Ka Bo Tsang. A Treasury of Chinese Snuff Bottles - The Mary and George Bloch Collection, 1998, Vol. 3, pp. 59-64, no. 394.
Christie's, New York, March 21, 2002, lot 166, The Blanche B. Exstein Collection.

Provenance:

Clare Lawrence Ltd.

This is a classic type of inkstone bottle, with a very typical inscription seen on other literati examples and with a yuzhi mark. What raises this bottle above more common dark purplish-brown examples is the unusual natural green color of the stone. Both colors of stone were produced in Zhaoqing (formerly Duanzhou) in Guangdong Province in Southern China, quarried from the River Duan. The stone was traditionally used for grinding ink because “its weight is light, soft like children’s skin, tender but not slippery”. The inscription is part of a poem, likely to have been composed by the Qianlong Emperor, one among the 30,000 verses he penned. Given the origin of the stone, the bottles may have been sent up from Guangzhou to the Court as imperial tributes. It is also intriguing, given the yuzhi (by imperial command) marks on a number of these bottles that the Qianlong Emperor made his first Southern tour in 1751. Two inkstones in the Imperial Collection are recorded in the Xiqing Yanpu carved with clusters of nine lingzhi fungus and bearing imperial inscriptions composed by the Emperor.

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