A WHITE-GROUND FIVE-COLOUR OVERLAY GLASS ‘CHILONG’ BOTTLE VASE MARK AND PERIOD OF QIANLONG |

modelled with a compressed globular body tapering to a tall tubular neck and resting on a short rounded foot, the exterior of the body skilfully carved through the single layer of red, pink, green, yellow and blue with a continuous scene of five clambering chilong, each rendered in a different colour, four around the lower body and the green one with its elongated body extending around the neck of the vessel and grasping its own tail in its mouth, all interspersed with green leaves below a green band with pendent foliate lappets encircling the rim, the yellow base overlaid with a layer of red around the foot and centred with a four-character wheel-cut reign mark within a square

Collection of Liliane Fould-Springer (1916-2003) and Elie de Rothschild (1917-2007).

This superb glass vase, so finely decorated with a multi-colour overlaid design of chilong and inscribed with a Qianlong four-character mark, is extremely rare. The five chilong are beautifully picked out in red, pink, yellow and cobalt-blue and green against an opaque white ground. A small number of Qianlong reign-marked overlaid glass vases is recorded in museum collections, but none of the exact same style. A ruby-red ground glass vase decorated in turquoise blue overlays with flowers and butterflies in the Palace Museum, Beijing is illustrated by Zhang Rong, Lustre of Autumn Water. Glass of the Qing Imperial Workshop, Beijing, 2005, pl. 81. It shares the same Qianlong nianzhi four-character mark, so intricately wheel-cut within a double square. The same mark is also found on a small glass jar in the Palace Museum, Beijing, illustrated ibid, pl. 79 overlaid with a pair of chilong in emerald green against a rich cobalt-blue ground. Interestingly, the border of stiff leaves at the neck on the current vase matches those on another glass vase and a reign-marked blue overlay glass vase in the Palace Museum, illustrated ibid. Clearly the current vase also emanated from the Palace Workshops.

For examples of unmarked Qianlong period white-ground multi-colour overlaid glass vases of similar decoration style, see a vase decorated with chilong in the Suntory Museum of Art, catalogued as Qianlong/Jiaqing, illustrated in The Glass the Galle Adored. Glass from the Qing Imperial Collection, Suntory Museum of Art, Tokyo, 2018, p. 104, cat. no. 78, a vase carved with chilong from the collection of Professor P.H. and Mrs. T. Plesch, sold in our London rooms, 12th November 1979, lot 74 and a vase carved with flowers from the Shorenstein collection, illustrated in C.F. Shangraw and C. Brown, A Chorus of Colors: Chinese Glass from Three American Collections, Asian Art Museum of San Francisco, San Francisco, 1995, cat. no. 78, and on the front cover, and sold at Christie’s Hong Kong, 1st December 2010, lot 2940.