Pavilion is thrilled to announce the arrival of our Winter Collection for 2025, comprising twenty-eight carefully selected snuff-bottles, each with their own unique aesthetic qualities and histories. The Winter Collection represents a shift in focus towards Imperial glass bottles this season, although not the exclusive content of our new collection, the material of glass provides here the core of the group. Alongside glass bottles, we are also exhibiting interesting jade, hardstone, jasper and Japanese examples of cloisonné and ceramic, all with a vibrancy of colour and creativity in a fitting celebration of the Chinese New Year.
Highlights of our Winter 2025 collection include ‘Amethyst Blush’, a bottle made at the Imperial glassworks between 1720 and 1820, comprising pale amethyst glass, striking in the pinkish hue of the glass itself and almost miniature in scale, the facetted octagonal form a standard motif of Imperial design. ‘Bitter Fruit’, formerly of the Bloch Collection represents another striking accomplishment in glass craft, with its single overlay of three separately coloured types of glass. The butterflies and bitter gourds are a combination rarely featured in snuff bottles, as is the use of a very pale-yellow glass here, which has allowed the artist to emphasize the red flowing line around the bottle. Another remarkable bottle, ‘Palace Yellow’ of compressed pear shape and made in translucent yellow glass, is typical of the colours produced very early on in the Imperial workshops, the wide mouth was also a frequent feature of early glass bottles.
For more information on Qing glass snuff-bottle production you can find the link to our previously published research in the Pavilion Archives here, where author Hugh Moss explores the subject in depth with an abundance of visual examples. We hope that you enjoy the collection !