Antique Enameled White Glass Snuff Bottle with Guyue Xuan Mark

This is a very good Chinese glass snuff bottle, beautifully hand enameled.

Snuff bottle was later converted to a scent bottle.

It is made of a milky white opaque glass and sits on a low oval foot. The bottle has been delicately hand painted in bold colourful enamels of red, orange, yellow and white. The design shows two different water lily flower and plant scenes in two square bordered panels, surrounded by floral sprigs and with carp fish on the sides.

There is a hand painted Guyue Xuan mark,18th/19th century, to the base.

Guyuexuan, often translated as Ancient Moon Pavillion, is commonly used as a name of a highly detailed enamel decoration originally found on glass snuff bottles. One possibly explanation to this name is that the reason why the pavillion was name "Ku" meaning old or ancient and "Yueh" meaning moon, is because the two words together make up the surname "Wu" which in that case could be the studio name of Director Wu of the Imperial Glass Works in Beijing around 1680, which incidently matches with the first appearance of this decoration in the Kangxi period, Qing Dynasty. The main difficulty in the production of enameled glass was in the fact that the melting point of the enamels was almost the same as that of glass why only small articles such as snuff bottles could be made. In the Qianlong period the Director of Imperial potteries, Tang Ying, was asked to adapt this decoration onto porcelain.

The upper part of the neck is set with silver, and the cap is also made of silver. The silver mark bears the number 925, which is not an English hallmark, so the silver part was most likely added to the bottle in Europe.

I cannot judge whether this bottle was actually made in the 18th century. If it was, its value should be in the thousands. If it is a talented 19th-century copy, it is certainly worth less. Either way, it is a very high-quality work by a true master.

Dimensions:

Height 8.8 cm,width 5.1 cm,depth 2.6 cm

Please study the accompanying photographs carefully as they form an integral part of this description. The item will be shipped with full tracking and insurance. It is important to note that shipping costs include labour, packaging and postage.