Up a Tree

Ye Zhongsan, Huashi, Beijing, Fourth Month, 1902
Height: 6.35 cm
Mouth/lip: 0.68/1.85 cm
Stopper: aquamarine

Provenance:
Eldred’s, Cape Cod, August 2008
Hugh Moss (HK) Ltd.

 

Crystal suffused with icy flaws, ink, and watercolours; with a flat lip and recessed foot surrounded by a protruding flat foot rim; painted on the inside with two scenes from the Liaozhai zhiyi 聊齋志異, one showing Fu Lian 傳廉 in a tree looking down upon Qiaoniang 巧孃 and her two maids, inscribed in clerical script with the story’s title, Qiaoniang, the other showing a man addressing an elderly woman and a younger woman in a landscape setting, inscribed in clerical script with the title Yuncui xian 雲翠仙, followed in running script by Renyin meiyue xie yu jingshi, Ye Zhongsan 壬寅梅月寫於都門葉仲三 (‘Drawn at the capital by Ye Zhongsan in the plum-blossom month of the renyin year’) with one seal of the artist, yin 印 (seal).

Alexander Whittaker