Art objects -- Collectors and collecting; Collectors and collecting
All Occidental methods of glass-working have long been known to the
Chinese. They have proved themselves skilful with blown, pressed, and
molded glass. However, their fame as glass-workers rests chiefly with
their cutting, deep chiseling, and undercutting objects of glass. In
this respect they have not been surpassed. Their work in this field was
undoubtedly inspired by their wide and varied experience with glyptic
work, a field in which their accomplishments in fashioning jade and
other hard stones served them a good turn.
As glass presented a somewhat less resisting mass than that of nephrite,
jadeite, or rock crystal, the Chinese lapidary found in it ready
response to his craftsmanship. The carved glass objects of the Chinese
usually are small. They generally suggest by skilful coloring and
tinting the hard stones they imitate. The Chinese snuff-bottles are
especially remarkable in this respect, as they are also in the marvelous
fertility of invention bestowed on their decoration, though in form they
are nearly of one general type and do not vary greatly in size. From the
plain crystalline glass bottles decorated with landscape or figure
subjects (by deftly painting the interior walls of the bottle so that
the scene shows through) to the much-bejeweled bottles, all these gems
of Chinese fabrication are triumphs of the art, patience, and ingenuity
of the Oriental hand and mind.
It is interesting to note that the Chinese have never made claim to the
discovery of glass. The historical work, “Wei Luo,” based on
third-century records, chronicles that ten colors of opaque glass were
imported by the Chinese from Rome between the years 221 and 264. The
Chinese themselves did not learn the art of glass-making until the fifth
century.
The fine porcelain snuff-bottles of the Celestials are indeed things to
be treasured. We find them in endless colors and designs. Some are
plain, some with under-glaze decoration, some cased with pierced
porcelain casing, others with molded decoration, and still others with
painted decoration. Occasionally one finds a porcelain bottle whose
glaze intentionally simulates glass.
The Chinese are skilful lapidaries. Their work in shaping jade and other
hard stones has not been surpassed. The Celestial craftsman likewise
shows great ingenuity in taking advantage of any irregularity in form or
color of the stone he is working. The various quartzes are worked by the
Chinese on the same treadle bench which they use in fashioning jade, and
they work quartz stones along the same general lines.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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