Description
Glass; overlaid in four colours with a flowering red peony spray on each side with green leaves rising from a blue rock, an amber-coloured cat on a rock on the narrow side, opposite a crane on the reverse, the foot rim neatly finished.
Once single colour overlays were established the next step was the development of bottles with several different colours of overlay. The development might have been inspired by the manner in which jade and hard stone bottles were being carved, making use of the various natural colours within the material to highlight aspects of the decoration. The earliest glass examples would have been developed within the Imperial glassworks, such as the bottle illustrated in Treasury 5, no. 978 with its classic court-style chilong, but this was a style which was taken up by private workshops late in the eighteenth century and well into the middle of the nineteenth.
This bottle belongs to a core group which all appear to be the products of one workshop. The colours used match exactly and the style of carving is a little stiff, with the ground plain not usually perfectly finished. The placement of the cat and the crane on the narrow sides is unusual. An example of this group is discussed in Treasury 5, no. 993.
