ANCIENT CIVILIZATIONS
Artifacts, Antiques, & Fine Collectibles
Chinese Blue Glass
Lunar Zodiac Ram's Head Perfume Bottle
Translucent Blue Glass with Ram Head Appliques Highlighted in Poly-Chrome
NOTE: William D. Houghton, the President of ANCIENT CIVILIZATIONS, a State of Washington Licensed Business, assumes all responsibility for the information contained in this description and for the English translation and transcription of the ancient Chinese graphic characters. Furthermore, I prohibit the further dissemination of this information in any written, video, or electronic format without my expressed, written approval. Thank You!
PROVENANCE/HISTORY
This ancient, cobalt-blue glass bottle was obtained from an old collection that once was held in Henan, China. The collection was reportedly moved to Hong Kong. This is the first time it has been offered for sale in the United
States. This museum quality item with its with dried contents caked inside is Extremely
RARE and is Guaranteed authentic and original!
This item
is legal to buy/sell under U.S. Statute covering cultural patrimony Code 2600,
CHAPTER 14, and is guaranteed to be as described or your money back. This item will come with a Certificate of
Authenticity (COA) from ANCIENT CIVILIZATIONS.
SUMMARY
Item: Chinese Blue Glass, Tripod Perfume Bottle: Lunar Ram Zodiac with Yellow Horns
Material: Translucent blue glass with Ram’s horns in yellow glass. Additional animals painted in black on the sides of the globular bottle
· Height: 4.28" (109mm)
·
Diameter: 2.97" (75mm) without the two decorative handles
· Weight: 4.7 oz. (133gr)
Condition: Very Good museum quality condition with no visible repairs or restorations. Some portion of the thick layer of white calcium mineral deposits has been professionally removed by previous owner in China. This conservation allows us to see some of the small animals that were painted in black on the vessel. Some remnants of the original, dried contents of the perfume bottle can be seen inside the flared mouth of the bottle.
Note: There is no guarantee as to what type of perfume, oil, or medicine actually remains in the glass vessel, as it has not been tested or chemically analyzed.
This item is legal to buy/sell under U.S. Statute covering cultural patrimony Code 2600, CHAPTER 14, and is guaranteed to be as described or your money back. This item will come with a Certificate of Authenticity (COA) from ANCIENT CIVILIZATIONS.
DETAILS
In addition to being the eighth of the animals of the Chinese Lunar Zodiac, the ram also symbolized nobility during the Tang Dynasty, as documented by the paintings found in imperial Tang tombs.
This small perfume bottle was recovered many years ago near the modern Chinese city of Xi’an, in the province of Shaanxi and amazingly has remained in excellent condition with no signs of repair of restoration. The flared mouth of the bottle is shaped to carefully pour its precious contents.
The bottle has a globular body with a short, flared neck and is beautifully highlighted by two, ram's heads with white glass eyes and bright yellow horns. Inside the bottle, one can still see the perfume residue that is now over 1,000 years old! The outside of the vase still has sections of the thick mineral and calcium and orange iron deposits from being buried for centuries.
The outside of this blue bottle has the painted image of a ram, guardian lion, and other animals in black paint directly on the glass and under the period correct patina of heavy mineral and calcium deposits. All these animals indicate it was made for a high, social status woman, very likely a member of the Imperial Court.
The Tang capitol Chang'an was an ancient capital of more than ten dynasties in Chinese history, today known as Xi'an. Chang'an means "Perpetual Peace" in Classical Chinese, since it was a capitol that was repeatedly used by new Chinese rulers. During the short-lived Xin Dynasty (9-23 AD), the city was renamed "Constant Peace;" however, the old name was later restored. By the time of the Ming dynasty, a new walled city named Xi'an, meaning "Western Peace", was built at the Sui and Tang dynasty city's site, which has remained its name to the present day.
The Shaanxi History Museum in Xi’an, China, is regarded as “the pearl of ancient dynasties and house of Chinese treasures”, gives a miniature overview of the thousands of years of Chinese history and the splendid ancient cultures of olden times. Shaanxi Province, is considered one of the birth places of Chinese culture, the capitol of 13 dynasties such as Zhou (1046 BC-256 BC), Han (202 BC-220) and Tang (618-907), and has its own unique history and cultural features.
TANG DYNASTY LUXURIES FOR WOMEN
Because of expanded trade and commerce in the Tang Dynasty, women in high-status families during the Tang Dynasty were part of a new, wealthy, leisure class. They were able to pursue other educational, recreational, cultural, and ideological luxuries in life. This is why the Tang was a period of great enlightenment.
Women paid more attention to their appearance make-up and clothes during this time. One Tang painting, “The Mural of Maid in Imperial Palace” from the tomb of Princess Yongtai, is displayed in the Shaanxi History Museum and shows in detail this new-found wealth in the Imperial Palace. This painting illustrates Tang women’s pursuit of fashion and beauty in regal settings. In the painting, nine maids— all in different costumes and make-up—are holding plates, candlesticks and boxes in each of their hands. Frescos in this hall are all collected from the tombs of royal family members who lived luxurious lives. Their relatives hoped that they would have the same treatment after they died; all these frescos reflect the good wishes of family members, which is still a Chinese tradition.
There is definitive evidence of the importation of Western glass to China via the famous Silk Road. After the middle of the 8th century, wealth Tang Dynasty families imported high-quality Islamic glass bottles from Egypt and other Middle Eastern countries were exported into China in large numbers—both for daily use and to ordain their lavish tombs for the afterlife. Internal glass production in China also started to thrive during the Tang Dynasty and experts believe the increased expertise in glass production with Xi’an was from the influx of Central Asian immigrants to the capitol city. Some experts have even suggested the “Silk Road” could also be called the “Glass Road.”
The main all-land Silk Road route went from Xian in eastern China via Kashgar in Western China, Samarkand in Central Asia and Baghdad in the Middle East to coastal cities on the Black Sea and the eastern Mediterranean such as Alexandria, Allepo and Trabazon.
THE SHEEP & RAM IN CHINESE CULTURE
The Chinese lunar calendar assigns an animal symbol to each year in every 12-year cycle. But the Chinese character for the eighth zodiac animal is yang, which can refer to either a sheep or goat when used without attributes. There is no such confusion when Chinese is used, as the word yang forms part of the name of sheep, goat and ram.
Chinese folklorists say the animal symbol can be either a sheep or goat, but is more likely to be a goat, given the latter's popularity as a farm animal among Han Chinese. Huang Yang, who researches the role of sheep and goats in Chinese culture, said tracing the origin of the zodiacal yang could be difficult. This is because the Chinese zodiac first appeared after the Shang Dynasty (around 1600-1046 BC), when Chinese did not differentiate between sheep and goats in language or in sacrificial offerings. Both species have a long history of domestication in China and have appeared on oracle bone scripts and other artifacts since prehistoric times, Huang said. "But if we judge from the fact that the Chinese zodiac is a Han tradition, yang are more likely goats, which are more common livestock for the Han Chinese," Huang said.
Fang Binggui, a folklorist in Fuzhou, Fujian Province, said the image of yang is open to regional interpretation. "People depict the zodiac animal based on the yang most common in their region. So it's often sheep in the north and goats in the south."
During Han Dynasty, rams were extensively applied in different materials, functions and contexts. For example, ram motif was found on wall paintings or effigies of Luoyang Tombs, which is suggested having evil-repelling or luck attracting images in mortuary contexts; in addition, rams were also implemented in Wu Liang Shrine, known as “The blissful and virtuous goat (fude yang 福德羊)”. A bronze seal displaying three rams in silhouette presents the possibility that the idea of “Sanyang kai Tai” was seen in Chinese visual culture as early as the Han dynasty.
The ram has appeared in artworks and considered auspicious animal symbol throughout Chinese history thanks to its auspicious implications. According to Shuowen by Xu Shen, the ram, or Yang羊 in Chinese, means auspiciousness or good fortune (Xiang祥). Further, the subject matter of the bowl refers to a propitious phrase “San Yang kai Tai 三陽開泰” , or literally “Three yang initiate the Tai”. The Yang here refers to the opposite of Yin, but it has the same pronunciation with rams in Chinese. The subject of the phrase derives from the Book of Changes. The trigram for the first month of the lunar New Year, Tai, or Peace, hexagram ( as represented by symbols), is composed harmoniously of yin and yang elements, while three yang form the base of it. It symbolizes peace throughout the heavens and earth. Further, following the gradual eclipses of yin lines by yang in preceding hexagrams, the Tai hexagram marks the cumulative completion of the transit from winter to spring, from old year to the new, specifically the interval between the winter solstice and the first lunar month. This happy course of events, replete with all the auspicious prospects inherent in the Tai hexagram is embodied by the three yang.
Without limiting to ceramics, the image of Sanyang kai Tai has been widely adopted in diversified forms all along Chinese art history, and appreciated by several emperors especially during Ming and Qing dynasties. Example can be drawn from a hanging scroll “Three Yang, an Auspicious Start” by Ming emperor Xhaunzhong, now preserved in National Palace Museum in Taipei. For the emperors, auspicious images were also the site where good fortune and virtue meet. In 1772, Qian Long composed and inscribed an essay on a painting depicted in reference to Xuanzhong’s work, entitled “Explication of Sanyang kai Tai”. After a lengthy disquisition on Tai hexagram and its commentaries, the emperor concluded his explication by exhorting his officials to nurture the people and preserve peace: to “bao Tai 保泰”.
TANG DYNASTY GLASS
There is definitive evidence of the importation of Middle Eastern glass to China via the famous Silk Road. After the middle of the 8th century, wealth Tang Dynasty families imported high-quality Islamic glass bottles from Egypt and other Middle Eastern countries were exported into China in large numbers—both for daily use and to ordain their lavish tombs for the afterlife.
Internal glass production in China also started to thrive during the Tang Dynasty and experts believe the increased expertise in glass production with Xi’an was from the influx of Central Asian immigrants to the capitol city. Some experts have even suggested the “Silk Road” could also be called the “Glass Road.”
The main all-land Silk Road route went from Xi’an in eastern China via Kashgar in Western China, Samarkand in Central Asia and Baghdad in the Middle East to coastal cities on the Black Sea and the eastern Mediterranean such as Alexandria, Allepo and Trabazon.
COLOR SYMBOLISM IN BUDDHISM
Buddhism traveled from India into China during the 1st century AD, becoming part of Chinese life and culture alongside the other established belief systems. Statues and Buddhist-related figures like these were commissioned by followers.
The cobalt blue color used in this glass perfume bottle was not chosen just just its beauty, but also for its symbolism in the Buddhist religion. Color symbolism is used in a wide variety of fascinating ways in Buddhist art and ritual. In Buddhism, each of five colors (pancha-varna: which are Blue, Black, Red, Green and Yellow) symbolizes a state of mind, a celestial Buddha, a part of the body, a part of the mantra word Hum, or a natural element. It is believed that by meditating on the individual colors, which contain their respective essences and are associated with a particular Buddha or bodhisattva, spiritual transformations can be achieved. Blue minerals were the most expensive and rare color in ancient China and had to be imported from the Far East.
1. Museum of Chinese History, Beijing
2. Shanghai Museum of Glass, Shanghai, China
3. Hunan Museum, China
4. Palace Museum, Beijing, China
5. Henan Provincial Museum, China
6. Shaanxi Archaeology Institute, China
7. The Ancestral Landscape, David N. Knightley, 2000
8. The Great Bronze Age of China, edited by Wen Fong, MET, 1980
9. China: A Dawn of the Golden Age.
10. Changhua Annals of the Republic of China (1911–1949)
11. British Museum, Jessica Rawson
12. Smithsonian Museum, Sackler & Freer Gallery, WDC
13. MET, New York
14. Chinese History Museum in Beijing, China, contains an outstanding collection of early Chinese glass objects, including a small, glass aqua cup that was found in a Han Dynasty tomb in Guangxi Province, China.
15. See “Ancient Glass Research Along the Silk Road” Edited by Gan Fuxi (Chinese Academy of Sciences & Fudan University, China), Robert Brill (The Corning Museum of Glass, USA), & Tian Shouyun (Chinese Academy of Sciences, China). This book states that ancient Chinese glass from the Eastern Han Dynasty to the Tang Dynasty (200-700 AD) contained High Lead Silicate or PBO-SiO2. Although chemical tests have not been run on this glass Jue, it is believed that it made from this glass composition.
16. See “Scientific Research in Early Chinese Glass” 1991, Author: Robert H. Brill and John H. Martin, editors.
17. Kwan, Simon; Early Chinese Glass; Hong Kong, 2001. ISBN. 9627 101524
18. Susan Whitfield, The Silk Road, Trade, Travel, War and Faith, London, 2004
Member of the Authentic Artifact Collectors Association (AACA)
Member of the Archaeological Institute of America (AIA)
Bid with confidence--as I have Positive Feedback from hundreds of satisfied customers from around the world!
Please look carefully at the photos, taken with macro lens, since they are part of the description. Some photos taken indoors with a strong back light to show the beauty of the translucent, blue glass vessel.
It would make a wonderful addition to your collection or a Super gift!
The stand is not part of the sale, just there to give you a better perspective and a good view of item.
And please ask any questions before you buy.
Thanks!
International buyers are responsible for all import taxes, duties, and shipping costs.