拍品专文
The first known reference to the making of glass in China by using rice is recorded in Martinus Martini's Atlas of China of 1655: 'They have long since learned to make from rice a wonderfully clear glass'. News of the manufacture of glass by Chinese craftsmen soon reached Europe and in particular the Jesuits. In 1695 a German Jesuit missionary, Kilian Stumpf, reknowned for his glass-making and enamelling skills, was summoned to Beijing by the Emperor Kangxi, and the following year supervised the establishment of an Imperial glassworks, possibly assisted by craftsmen from glass-making centres in Yanshan and Guangzhou. Stumpf brought to traditional Chinese glass-making methods the German technique of wheel-cutting and in particular diamond-point engraving. For a further discussion on the Imperial glassworks, see E. Byrne Curtis, Chinese Glass and the Vatican Records, T.O.C.S., 1992-93, vol.57, pp.49-58.
This stem-cup appears to be an extremely rare example of the combination of an entirely Chinese-taste shape, with the European-influenced technique of diamond-point engraving, albeit with a Chinese-taste design. For examples of Chinese colourless glass with this technique of engraving, but with a far more European style of decoration, see the dish with grapevine and bird motifs from the collection of Walter and Phyllis Shorenstein, exhibited in the China House Gallery, New York, 1990, Clear as Crystal, Red as Flame, Catalogue no.10, again in the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco 1995 exhibition, A Chorus of Colours, Catalogue no.20; and the pair of glass cups, also with vine and birds, from The Corning Museum of Glass, New York, included in the China House Gallery 1990 exhibition, ibid., as no.11.
This stem-cup appears to be an extremely rare example of the combination of an entirely Chinese-taste shape, with the European-influenced technique of diamond-point engraving, albeit with a Chinese-taste design. For examples of Chinese colourless glass with this technique of engraving, but with a far more European style of decoration, see the dish with grapevine and bird motifs from the collection of Walter and Phyllis Shorenstein, exhibited in the China House Gallery, New York, 1990, Clear as Crystal, Red as Flame, Catalogue no.10, again in the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco 1995 exhibition, A Chorus of Colours, Catalogue no.20; and the pair of glass cups, also with vine and birds, from The Corning Museum of Glass, New York, included in the China House Gallery 1990 exhibition, ibid., as no.11.