A Pair of Imperial Yellow Glass Vases, China, 1850-1880. Photo courtesy Vanderven Oriental Art.

Height: 26,4 cm. Price on request

Provenance: Private Collection, The Netherlands 

The documentation of Chinese glass has been almost as nonchalant as its production. It is probably true to say that Stephen W. Bushell (Chinese Art, Handbook of the Victoria and Albert Museum, 1st edition 1906) and W.B. Honey (A Handbook Guide to the Victoria and Albert Museum 1946) were, if not the first, certainly amongst the first Westerners to attempt a serious analysis of the history of Chinese glass. Before that date glass had been largely neglected as too inferior to China’s other arts and crafts to be considered. Research by both Bushell and Honey has had most wide-ranging influence on the understanding of glass.  

Pre-Qing glass was thought to have been mainly imported into China and then melted down, primarily to produce a cheap substitute for jade in the manufacture of ritual objects for the tomb, such as bi discs. Interestingly, several imported vessels have been treasured in their original form and have been buried as such. The Wei Lua history, based on records from the Three Kingdoms (AD 221 - 226), lists ten colours of opaque glass imported from Rome. It has only recently become apparent through clearly documented excavations, such as those at Hebei, Shaanxi and elsewhere, that the Chinese could also have been producing their own metal at a much earlier date than has previously been thought.  

The first literary evidence of indigenous Chinese glass manufacture does not occur until the fifth century AD when historians from both Northern and Southern Kingdoms attribute to their craftsmen the introduction of the skill. In the north the history of Pei Shih relates that it was during the reign of T’ai Wu (AD 424 - 452) of the Wei Dynasty that Indo-Scythian traders told the Chinese how ‘liu-li’ (opaque glass) could be made by fusing certain materials together. He recalls glass being made more brilliant than any imported ware and surpassing it in colour.  

While this account and recent excavations bear some witness to the flow of imported wares and the resulting exchange of ideas, it would seem that glass manufacture was already established to some degree as early as 113 BC. The tomb of Liusheng Mancheng in Hebei has revealed three vessels of Chinese origin. Similarly, the excavation of a pagoda base in Dingxian, Hebei, of AD 48 yielded six complete vessels and one incomplete example, all of Chinese origin. As research work progresses, more Chinese vessels come to light, some in the form of ritual shapes.  

The vast majority of Chinese glass currently known was manufactured after 1680; a date clearly set by Kangxi Emperor’s official patronage of the palace’s 27 workshops of arts and industries of which one specialised in the manufacture of glass.  

There is no doubt that the influence of Europeans, in particular the Jesuit Missionaries, had much to do with both the ‘recipe’ and the finished product of this early imperial Chinese glass workshop. However, even with their technical knowledge, a sickness known as ‘crizzling’ affects the 17th-century and some early 18th-century articles. This decomposition caused by an excess of alkali in the metal, occurs in the majority of new glass house ventures as the recipe takes time to perfect.  

Gradually the Chinese began to perfect the art of glass-making, developing it into a distinctive Chinese craft in both form and decoration. What followed, was a blaze of colour, in both monochrome and polychrome, which in turn was to influence 19th-century European glass leading to confusion and often resulting in the Chinese carved examples being mistaken for the European counterparts. A decorative feature which developed in the 18th century was the use of faceting. This is unusual as a technique as it seems to be almost exclusively reserved for glass, unlike virtually every other decorative feature, which can be seen to be copied from other Chinese works of art, particularly ceramics.  

The Chinese have made in the 18th and 19th century monochromes including breath taking yellows, red, blue, green etc. and forms seldom seen in other fields of Chinese decorative arts.  

Vanderven Oriental Art - http://www.vanderven-vanderven.com/