The Mystic Realm

Probably Beijing, 1730-1800
Height: 6.58 cm
Mouth/lip: .85/1.53 cm
Stopper: tourmaline; jadeite finial

Provenance:
The Kobacker Collection
Robert Hall, September 2011.

 

Transparent sapphire-blue and colourless glass suffused with bubbles and tiny fragments of white glass; with a wide mouth, flat lip and recessed, flat oval foot surrounded by a protruding, flat oval footrim; carved as a single overlay with a continuous scene with, on one main side, a crane turning in flight above a rock, with a lingzhi growing from it, rising from turbulent waves with a bat in flight and formalized clouds, and on the other with another crane, a tally in its beak, flying above a carp rising from turbulent waves, the vapours emitted from its mouth containing a heavenly pavilion, with two more bats.

Alexander Whittaker