Cloud Pavilion Treasure

Made for Yunxuan, Yangzhou,
probably 1810 - 1848
Height: 6.22 cm
Mouth/lip: 0.62/1.39 cm
Stopper: glass; pearl finial; vinyl collar

Provenance:
Janos Szekeres
Sotheby’s, New York, 27 October 1986, lot 63
Bloch Collection
Sotheby’s, Hong Kong, 26 May 2014, lot 1023

Published:
JICSBS, 7/2 (June 1975), 9
Kleiner 1987, no. 128
Sydney L. Moss Ltd, London, exhibition poster, October 1987
Moss, Graham, and Tsang 2002, no.1034

Exhibited:
New Orleans Museum of Art, October 1980
Sydney L. Moss Ltd., London, October 1987
Creditanstalt, Vienna, May-June 1993

Transparent ruby-red glass and semi-transparent, milky white glass, both with a few scattered air bubbles of various sizes; with a flat lip and recessed convex foot surrounded by a protruding flat foot rim; carved as a single overlay with a continuous design of Zhong Kui 鍾馗 riding a formalized cloud and wielding his sword in the air, with an attendant demon behind him, also on a cloud, offering a tray with a wine pot and cup, and three bats ahead of him, the ground beneath him with a perforated rock on which sits what appears to be the three-legged toad of Liu Hai 劉海, with grass growing nearby, inscribed in relief seal script, Yunxuan zhenwan 雲軒珍玩 (‘For the treasured enjoyment of Yunxuan’).