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Lot 18
A FIVE-COLOR OVERLAY GLASS ‘CHILONG’ BOTTLE VASE, QIANLONG MARK AND PERIODChina, 1736-1795. Finely carved through a single translucent layer of ruby red, dusky pink, emerald green, lemon yellow, and sapphire blue with a continuous scene of ten chilong, seven sinuously coiling on the body and three clambering around the neck chasing their own long multi-furcated tails, all against an opaque white ground. Four-character Qianlong nianzhi mark wheel-cut to the base and of the period.Provenance: French private collection, by repute acquired prior to the year 2000 in Paris.Condition: Good condition with minor wear and expected manufacturing flaws, such as pitting and open swirls, mostly to the interior of the neck, as well as minuscule nicks and losses, one old fill to the foot rim (ca. 3 cm long).Weight: 423.0 gDimensions: Height 19.4 cmThis superb glass vase, so finely decorated with a multi-color overlaid design of chilong and inscribed with a Qianlong four-character mark, is extremely rare. A small number of Qianlong reign-marked overlaid glass vases is recorded in museum collections, but none of the exact same style.Literature comparison: 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, bearing a similar wheel-cut Qianlong nianzhi four-character mark, but 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. For examples of unmarked Qianlong period white-ground multi-color overlaid glass vases of similar decoration style, see a vase decorated with chilong in the Suntory Museum of Art, cataloged as Qianlong/Jiaqing, illustrated in The Glass that Galle Adored, Glass from the Qing Imperial Collection, Suntory Museum of Art, Tokyo, 2018, p. 104, cat. no. 78, 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, 1995, cat. no. 78, and on the front cover, and sold at Christie’s Hong Kong, 1st December 2010, lot 2940.Auction result comparison: Compare with a closely related vase at Sotheby’s Hong Kong in Gems of Chinese Art – The Speelman Collection II on 3 October 2018, lot 3428, bought-in at an estimate of HKD 800,000-1,000,000, and a related but slightly smaller vase at Christie’s London in Fine Chinese Ceramics and Works of Art on 6 November 2018, lot 131, sold for GBP 25,000.乾隆款及年代五色套料螭龍紋長頸瓶中國，1736-1795年。涅白地上使用寶石紅、粉紅、翡翠綠、檸檬黃和藍寶石藍等五色套料表現螭龍紋，蜿蜒曲折。底足“乾隆年制”四字款。來源：法國私人收藏，購於2000年巴黎。品相：狀況良好，有輕微磨損，並且可見製做缺陷，例如凹痕和明顯的旋流，主要出現在頸部內部，並且細微的划痕和缺損，圈足上有小補（約3厘米長）。重量：423.0 克尺寸：高19.4 厘米 拍賣結果比較：一件非常相似的長頸瓶見香港蘇富比Gems of Chinese Art – The Speelman Collection II 拍場2018年10月 3日lot 3428, 估價HKD 800,000-1,000,000； 另一件稍小的瓶子見倫敦佳士得Fine Chinese Ceramics and Works of Art 拍場2018年11月6 日lot 131, 售價GBP 25,000.
Lot 364
A SAPPHIRE SNUFF BOTTLE, POSSIBLY IMPERIAL, QING DYNASTYChina, 1750-1850. Well hollowed with a small mouth, finely carved in relief to one side with a monkey seated next to a craggy rock, pointing with one raised hand towards a butterfly flying above, and to the other with a grazing horse.Provenance: From the private collection of Dr. Mary Kaufman, New York, USA. Thence by descent within the same family. Dr. Kaufman (1927-2013) was a well known NYC snuff bottle collector.Condition: Excellent condition with minor wear. The stone with natural fissures, some of which may have developed into small hairline cracks over time.Stopper: Coral stopper carved as a clambering chilong, gilt metal collar.Weight: 102.0 gDimensions: Height including stopper 63 mm. Diameter neck 19 mm and mouth 6 mmMonkeys are a popular subject partly because of their meaning in various rebuses, but also because of their longevity symbolism. The depiction of a monkey on a horse’s back for example represents the rebus ‘Ma shang feng hou’, which may be translated as ‘May you receive a swift promotion to a high rank of office’. The butterfly is likewise a symbol of longevity and appears in rebuses because the character ‘die’ is homophonous to another character meaning ’70 to 80 years of age’.This is one of the best from a group of early sapphire snuff bottles, several of which are of related form (see literature comparison). The color of the stone is extraordinary for so large a piece, deep, dense and vibrant, all equally spread throughout the bottle. Even the pattern of matrix and paler clouds, which inevitably run through a sapphire pebble of this size, are attractive and fascinating as texture.Harder than jadeite to work, and being a precious material and translucent, sapphire is almost never extensively hollowed, although this particular bottle is reasonably well hollowed, even by jadeite standards for the range of bottles of this general shape. A test reveals a Mohs hardness of 7-8 for the matrix areas and clearly above 8 (and some even above 9) for the purer areas. The hollowing is also achieved through a relatively small mouth, a common feature of the oval bottles in sapphire, ruby or jadeite which may offer a further clue to dating. In 1888, Zhang Yishu wrote some supplementary remarks to Zhao Zhiqian's Yonglu xianjie (see Richard John Lynn's translation, JICSBS Summer, 1995, p. 18). He comments that originally the size of a snuff bottle mouth might exceed 12 mm, but that later this changed so they would not exceed 6 mm. He puts no date on this change, but if we look to hardstone bottles with mouths of 6 mm or less for further information, it would seem that by the Qianlong period, and particularly the second half, the smaller mouth was already well established.Sapphire and ruby were among the stones classified by the court as 'precious' along with pearls, jadeite, cat's eye and diamonds, while the 'semi-precious' materials were tourmaline, nephrite, amethyst, amber, turquoise, lapis lazuli, coral, quartz, agate, seashells, and others (according to Guoli Gugong bowuyuan 1986, p. 30). The same source informs us that on court belts, the use of ruby and sapphire was reserved for the emperor (p. 31). However, this does not mean that the materials were generally restricted to the emperor, since the hat-finial of the first rank of civil or military officials was also of ruby.Both sapphire and ruby are of the corundum family and consist of crystals of aluminum oxide. If chromium ions replace the original crystal's aluminum, the result is ruby. The Chinese might have had supplies from Kashmir, famous for its deep cornflower-blue sapphires, but the most likely source on a regular basis would have been Magok in Burma, where mining for both sapphire and ruby had been carried out since the late sixteenth century. This source would certainly have supplied the court after the normalization of relations in 1784 ended a protracted period of hostilities between the two countries, although illicit trade would have been sporadic before that date. This event played a large role in the subsequent massive popularity of jadeite, which became well established as a precious stone only in the last decades of the eighteenth century (see Moss, Graham, and Tsang 1993, no. 60) and it seems likely that this group of early sapphire and ruby bottles, which so resemble their many jadeite counterparts, date from the same mid-Qing period and were probably made for the court. Burmese sapphire is characteristically quite heavily flawed, as is the ruby, but this is of little help in a snuff-bottle context where all material large enough to form a snuff bottle is going to be flawed. Another possible source was Thailand, where darker blue sapphires were found in quantity.There is, of course, no such thing as a gem-quality sapphire snuff bottle. Any stone imported to the Qing court that was of sufficient size for a snuff bottle would never have been hollowed out if it was flawless enough to be valuable as a gemstone, for hollowing would have recklessly destroyed its depth of color. The ruby or sapphire material used for larger-scale carvings in China – and snuff bottles were 'larger scale' for gem materials – was always heavily flawed. What is unusual here is that the flaws are pleasingly even and consist mostly of a fabric of thin grayish-white and distinct iron-red lines. Additionally, the inclusions and shadings to the stone have been skillfully incorporated into the depiction of the craggy rockwork and surely also played a role in determining the horse’s pose.Literature comparison: For the Count Blucher ruby, see Moss, 1971a, no. 103, and for the Beatty example, Chapman 1988 p. 61, fig. 9, where fig. 10 is a related plain sapphire. Another plain, early sapphire bottle similar to this is illustrated in Hamilton 1977, p. 55 no. S–58, and one of a different shape in Ford 1982, no. 58. Another, with mask handles and a band of lappets around the base, was offered by Sotheby's, Hong Kong, 28 October 1992, lot 422, while an old, fruit-form sapphire bottle is illustrated by Stevens 1976, no. 632, where a range of green jadeite bottles of an ovoid form similar to that of the majority of sapphire and ruby examples is also shown (nos. 438–441 and 449).Auction result comparison: Compare with a related but smaller sapphire snuff bottle with a gold collar, dated to 1700-1820, at Bonhams Hong Kong, in Fine Chinese Art, on 28 November 2011, lot 48, sold for HKD 524,000, and a closely related sapphire snuff bottle, dated 1770-1850, at Bonhams Hong Kong, in Snuff Bottles from the Mary and George Bloch Collection Part I, on 28 May 2010, lot 13, sold for HKD 780,000.清代藍寶石鼻烟壺, 或爲御制中國，1750-1850年。掏膛良好，小嘴，一面雕刻一隻猴子站在岩石上手指蝴蝶，另一面雕刻著一匹馬。來源：美國紐約Mary Kaufman博士私人收藏，之後傳承於同一家族。Kaufman博士(1927-2013)是一位紐約知名鼻烟壺收藏家。品相：狀況極好，輕微磨損。藍寶石内天然裂紋，一些可能會隨著時間的流逝發展成細髮絲綫裂紋壺蓋：螭龍紋珊瑚蓋，鎏金金屬蓋托 重量：102.0 克尺寸：總高63 毫米；頸部直徑19 毫米；嘴部直徑6 毫米
Lot 381
A THREE-COLOR OVERLAY GLASS SNUFF BOTTLE, QING DYNASTYChina, 18th-19th century. Of ovoid form with an oval foot ring, recessed base and convex top. The bubble-suffused ‘snowflake’ ground overlayed in transparent ruby red, sapphire blue and emerald green to depict fishes and lotuses atop a circumferential wave border, all in high relief and fine incision work.Provenance: From the collection of Dr. Erika Pohl-Ströher (1919-2016), thence by descent in the same family. Dr. Erika Pohl-Ströher was a German-born Swiss resident and heiress to the hair care and cosmetics company Wella AG. She was a passionate collector and had amassed in her lifetime various important art collections, as well as one of the world’s most valuable collections of gems and minerals.Condition: Very good condition with minuscule nibbling to edges of overlays and some expected manufacturing flaws such as bubbles and brown spots.Stopper: ‘Beijing’ style carved lapis lazuli and bone spoonWeight: 60.7 g Dimensions: Height including stopper 69 mm. Diameter neck 15 mm and mouth 7 mm清代雪花地三色套料鼻烟壺中國，十八至十九世紀。卵圓形，橢圓形底足内凹，頂部凸出。泡沫瀰漫的“雪花”地套透明寶石紅、藍寶石和翡翠綠料，描繪了魚和荷花，雕琢精美。來源：Erika Pohl-Ströher（1919-2016）博士收藏，保存於同一家族至今。 Erika Pohl-Ströher博士是德國出生的瑞士人，是護髮和化妝品公司Wella AG的女繼承人。 她是一位忠誠的收藏家，一生中積累了許多重要的藝術收藏以及世界上最有價值的寶石和礦石收藏之一。圖片：Dr. Erika Pohl-Ströher品相：極好的狀態，套料邊緣有磨損，一些預期的製造缺陷，例如氣泡和褐色斑點。壺蓋：京式雕青金石壺蓋，骨質小壺匙重量：60.7 克尺寸：總高69 毫米；頸部直徑15 毫米；嘴部直徑7 毫米
Lot 386
A WHITE OVERLAY SAPPHIRE-BLUE GLASS ‘FLORAL’ SNUFF BOTTLE, QING DYNASTYChina, 1740-1840. Carved in relief through the opaque white layer to the translucent sapphire blue ground to one side with two flowers on leafy stems and to the other with a flower and a bud, each on leafy stems.Provenance: From the collection of Mary Ann Edmondson Bresee (1932-2017), Georgia, USA, avid collector and former member of the International Chinese Snuff Bottle Society. Her grandfather was Walter T. Candler, son of Asa G. Candler, the founder of the Coca-Cola Company. Her bottles were exhibited both at the Cummer Museum of Art and Gardens and the Norton Museum of Art.Condition: Good condition with wear, nibbling, smoothened losses to edges, and manufacturing flaws, such as pitting, glass swirls, and open bubbles.Stopper: Opaque white glass, metal spoonWeight: 57.6 gDimensions: Height including stopper 65 mm. Diameter neck 13 mm and mouth 8 mmAuction result comparison: Compare with a related bottle carved with lilies at Christie’s New York in The Ruth and Carl Barron Collection of Fine Chinese Snuff Bottles: Part I on 16 September 2015, lot 221, sold for USD 12,500.清代寶石藍地套白料花卉紋鼻烟壺中國，1740-1840年。透明寶石藍地上雕琢白色套料成花卉紋。 來源：美國佐治亞州Mary Ann Edmondson Bresee（1932-2017）收藏。她曾是國際中國鼻煙壺協會的會員。 其祖父是Walter T. Candler，可口可樂公司創始人Asa G.Candler的兒子。 她的鼻烟壺在Cummer Museum of Art and Gardens博物館和Norton Museum of Art博物館均有展出。 圖片：Mary Ann Edmondson Bresee (1932-2017) 品相：狀況良好，有磨損，邊緣有磕損，製造缺陷例如點蝕，玻璃漩渦和開放的氣泡。 壺蓋：涅白玻璃, 金屬小壺匙 重量：57.6 克 尺寸：總高65 毫米；頸部直徑13 毫米；嘴部直徑8 毫米 拍賣結果比較：一件相似套料百合花紋見紐約佳士得The Ruth and Carl Barron Collection of Fine Chinese snuff bottles: Part I 拍場2015年9月16日lot 221, 售價USD 12,500.
Lot 103
A French 18ct white gold sapphire and diamond ring. The ring in the Art deco style having a central oval lavender blue mixed cut sapphire set to a rectangular plaque, flanked by four round brilliant cut diamonds with a further 12 round brilliant cut diamonds to a terraced mount and plain band. Estimated diamond colour and clarity G- H / VS. Sapphire measures approx 9.2mm x 10mm x 6.5mm. Estimated total diamond weight 2.5ct. Size M.5. Weight 9.6g
Lot 108
An Art Deco style diamond, sapphire and ruby ring, the central round brilliant cut diamond weighing approx. 1ct, the band marked '750', gross wt. 3.57g, size J/K. Condition - very good, stones appear free from any abrasions/fractures etc, band and setting also appears free from any damage/repair, no evidence of resizing.
Lot 143
An Art Deco full diamond and sapphire eternity ring, gross approx. diamond wt. 0.65 carats, engraved sides, unmarked, gross wt. 3.62g, size Q. Condition - two sapphires with a small chips, another with surface reaching fracture, others ok, band appears to have been re-sized, general wear, stones appear secure, sold without certificate, however, diamonds appear colourless and bright, some with minor inclusions visible with 10x loupe only.
Lot 145
An Edwardian 9ct gold sapphire ring, the pear cut stone weighing approx. 0.66 carats, sponsor's initials JF, Chester 1908, gross wt. 2.74g, size P. Condition - abrasions to facets and a chip to one facet, otherwise ok, general wear etc. no evidence of resizing, inclusions just visible with naked eye, further inclusions visible with 10x loupe, medium blue with sight colour zoning, the central stone measuring: length 5.63mm, width 4.34mm and depth 3.62mm.
Lot 164
A sapphire and diamond cluster pendant on chain, the central bezel set round mixed cut sapphire weighing approx. 1.75 carats, pendant length 20mm, chain length 41cm, both chain and pendant marked 750, gross wt. 7.48g. Condition - minor abrasions to facet edges on sapphire, otherwise fine. Condition - minor abrasions to facet edges on sapphire, otherwise fine, good colour, zoning visible with 10x loupe, central stone measuring: approx. diam. 6.81mm, dept 4.95.
Lot 242
Georgian sapphire and pearl memorial ring set in yellow metal. Inscribed 1815. Ring size M. Approx weight 3.6g. (B.P. 21% + VAT) Condition is good. Gem set bezel is approximately 1 cm square. Not hallmarked - catalogued as yellow metal, not tested. Sapphire 0.5 mm x 0.5 mm approx. Not foil backed.
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