A Qing Dynasty vase 200 years ahead of its time

By Stephy Chung, CNN

Hong Kong (CNN) — There’s a plucky little Qing Dynasty artifact that at first glance looks out of place among China’s many Forbidden City treasures. Instead of the ornate porcelain and cloisonné enameling often associated with imperial vases, this one is made of blown glass. With its swirling red, white and blue ribbons and emerald green base and mouth, it evokes a spinning barbershop pole; an item which could slot straight into a 1960s living room.

Standing at just over eight inches, the curiously contemporary-looking object bears the reign mark of the Qianlong Emperor. Such Chinese characters were inscribed or stamped on most of the hundreds of thousands of works made during the Chinese monarch’s rule in the 18th century.

Qianlong, one of history’s greatest and most prolific collectors, had opulent taste and seemingly bottomless funds. “He loved the profusion of colors, and textures, and all kinds of fine things,” said Daisy Wang, Deputy Director and Chief Curator at the Hong Kong Palace Museum, which until this August, exhibited the vase on loan from the Beijing Palace Museum.

“He always thought, ‘more is more,’” she added, and under his six-decade rule, art production flourished.

The vase, which may appear simple compared to decorative porcelain counterparts (where “little white space would be left”), might have surprised the emperor, said Marco Almeida, a Senior Vice President at Christie’s Asia Pacific and the auction house’s Head of Chinese Ceramics and Works of Art.

China at that time had taken the likes of ceramics and lacquerware to the next level, but Europe was still ahead in its glass-making technologies, despite the Chinese making the material since the Western Zhou period more than 2,000 years earlier.

Whereas other glass vases were small, plain, and monochromatic, “suddenly, you have this vase with multiple colors, and a style of decoration that was alien,” he said. “I think the emperor must have been quite taken by it and quite pleased.”

The object also reveals how cosmopolitan the Qianlong court was, which, like the Mughal court in India, welcomed artisans from all corners of China and the rest of the world, according to Wang.

“Putting myself in Qianlong’s shoes, he would consider the vase to be really beautiful, different and novel. That was the value,” she said.

It is also incredibly rare. At the Beijing Palace Museum, there are over 300,000 pieces of porcelain in a collection that spans thousands of years of Chinese history, and only a “handful” of glass vases, added the curator.

Wang said the vase was likely made either by a European missionary or with technologies and ingredients introduced by missionaries who wound up working in the imperial workshops, or “zaobanchu.” (During the Kangxi emperor’s reign in the Qing Dynasty, German Jesuit missionary Kilian Stumpf began overseeing glass production).

The zaobanchu, located in the Forbidden City complex and around the country, had dozens of departments specializing in paintings, textiles, wood carving, materials and more — every minute aspect required to create elaborate pieces.

Fashioning the vase, according to the Hong Kong Palace Museum, was akin to pulling candy. Artisans would have pulled hot colored glass into thin tubes, gluing pieces onto the vase’s body, working quickly to roll it as it was heated and cooled again and again as its swirled pattern took shape.

Almedia said that while the technique used to make the vase was European, and similar to the “latticino” method used in Venetian glassmaking, the “sensuous” shape was Chinese as of course, was the reign mark. “It’s the perfect, and clear-cut marriage of what is Chinese and what is Western.” The Christie’s specialist said it would be difficult to ascribe its value, but he called the artifact, “borderline priceless.”

Wang, who is curating a forthcoming exhibition on imperial workshops at the Hong Kong Palace Museum in September, described Qianlong as a “micromanager in today’s company culture.”

He would meticulously document objects, and often gave specific instructions on their design, proportion and size. The zaobanchu during Qianlong’s reign comprised nearly one thousand artisans, who worked out of fear to serve the demands of the insatiable emperor who would sometimes dole out severe punishments, like taking away a year’s salary. “He looked at every step in detail and really dwelt on them as well.”

The vase has a “twin brother,” according to Wang, who explained that often objects were created in pairs and in even, lucky numbers. In Beijing Palace Museum’s collection, there’s another one with imperceptible differences — at least to the naked eye, except that it’s a hair taller.

And some 5,000 miles away, at Bristol Museum & Art Gallery in the UK, there’s yet another version — this one elongated and olive-shaped, with its threads of color more spaced apart.

Kate Newnham, the museum’s Senior Curator of Visual Arts, speculates that the vases were likely created around the same time and scientific analysis “might reveal they are from the glass of similar recipes, perhaps even from the same batch.”

She added there’s no evidence, so far, supporting that Qianlong personally commissioned the vase sitting in the Bristol collection. But it’s clear he took a “close interest” in output from the glass atelier. Newnham said imperial archives from 1753 include the emperor’s instructions to make a few more “threaded-glass” pitchers after seeing some presented by a French Jesuit craftsman.

For such novelty pieces, there would always be more than one version of an object for the emperor to choose from, Almeida explained. “They would want to experiment and see what else they could do with it.”

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