{"id":591419,"date":"2026-08-21T09:36:13","date_gmt":"2026-08-21T09:36:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/591419\/"},"modified":"2026-08-21T09:36:13","modified_gmt":"2026-08-21T09:36:13","slug":"a-qing-dynasty-vase-200-years-ahead-of-its-time","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/591419\/","title":{"rendered":"A Qing Dynasty vase 200 years ahead of its time"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n EDITOR\u2019S NOTE:\u00a0 Curio is a CNN Style series<\/a> spotlighting small objects and the big ideas behind them.\n<\/p>\n

Hong Kong\u00a0\u2014\u00a0\n <\/p>\n

\n There\u2019s a plucky little Qing Dynasty artifact that at first glance looks out of place among China\u2019s many Forbidden City treasures. Instead of the ornate porcelain and cloisonn\u00e9 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.\n <\/p>\n

\n 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\u2019s rule in the 18th century.\n <\/p>\n

\n Qianlong, one of history\u2019s greatest and most prolific collectors, had opulent taste and seemingly bottomless funds. \u201cHe loved the profusion of colors, and textures, and all kinds of fine things,\u201d 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.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cHe always thought, \u2018more is more,\u2019\u201d she added, and under his six-decade rule, art production flourished.\n <\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

\"The<\/p>\n

\n The vase, which may appear simple compared to decorative porcelain counterparts (where \u201clittle white space would be left\u201d), might have surprised the emperor, said Marco Almeida, a Senior Vice President at Christie\u2019s Asia Pacific and the auction house\u2019s Head of Chinese Ceramics and Works of Art.\n <\/p>\n

\n 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.\n <\/p>\n

\n Whereas other glass vases were small, plain, and monochromatic, \u201csuddenly, you have this vase with multiple colors, and a style of decoration that was alien,\u201d he said. \u201cI think the emperor must have been quite taken by it and quite pleased.\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\"The<\/p>\n

\n 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.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cPutting myself in Qianlong\u2019s shoes, he would consider the vase to be really beautiful, different and novel. That was the value,\u201d she said.\n <\/p>\n

\n 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 \u201chandful\u201d of glass vases, added the curator.\n <\/p>\n

\n 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 \u201czaobanchu.\u201d (During the Kangxi emperor\u2019s reign in the Qing Dynasty, German Jesuit missionary Kilian Stumpf<\/a> began overseeing glass production).\n <\/p>\n

\n 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 \u2014 every minute aspect required to create elaborate pieces.\n <\/p>\n

\n 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\u2019s body, working quickly to roll it as it was heated and cooled again and again as its swirled pattern took shape.\n <\/p>\n

\n Almedia said that while the technique used to make the vase was European, and similar to the \u201clatticino\u201d method used in Venetian glassmaking, the \u201csensuous\u201d shape was Chinese as of course, was the reign mark. \u201cIt\u2019s the perfect, and clear-cut marriage of what is Chinese and what is Western.\u201d The Christie\u2019s specialist said it would be difficult to ascribe its value, but he called the artifact, \u201cborderline priceless.\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

\n Wang, who is curating a forthcoming exhibition on imperial workshops at the Hong Kong Palace Museum in September, described Qianlong as a \u201cmicromanager in today\u2019s company culture.\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\n He would meticulously document objects, and often gave specific instructions on their design, proportion and size. The zaobanchu during Qianlong\u2019s 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\u2019s salary. \u201cHe looked at every step in detail and really dwelt on them as well.\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\n The vase has a \u201ctwin brother,\u201d according to Wang, who explained that often objects were created in pairs and in even, lucky numbers. In Beijing Palace Museum\u2019s collection, there\u2019s another one with imperceptible differences \u2014 at least to the naked eye, except that it\u2019s a hair taller.\n <\/p>\n

\n And some 5,000 miles away, at Bristol Museum & Art Gallery in the UK, there\u2019s yet another version \u2014 this one elongated and olive-shaped, with its threads of color more spaced apart.\n <\/p>\n

\n Kate Newnham, the museum\u2019s Senior Curator of Visual Arts, speculates that the vases were likely created around the same time and scientific analysis \u201cmight reveal they are from the glass of similar recipes, perhaps even from the same batch.\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\"The<\/p>\n

\"The<\/p>\n

\n She added there\u2019s no evidence, so far, supporting that Qianlong personally commissioned the vase sitting in the Bristol collection. But it\u2019s clear he took a \u201cclose interest\u201d in output from the glass atelier. Newnham said imperial archives from 1753 include the emperor\u2019s instructions to make a few more \u201cthreaded-glass\u201d pitchers after seeing some presented by a French Jesuit craftsman.\n <\/p>\n

\n For such novelty pieces, there would always be more than one version of an object for the emperor to choose from, Almeida explained. \u201cThey would want to experiment and see what else they could do with it.\u201d\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"EDITOR\u2019S NOTE:\u00a0 Curio is a CNN Style series spotlighting small objects and the big ideas behind them. Hong…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":591420,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[146,85,46],"class_list":["post-591419","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-entertainment","tag-il","tag-israel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/591419","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=591419"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/591419\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/591420"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=591419"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=591419"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=591419"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}