ESOTERIC COLLECTING

Fig. 1. Jade Meiping Snuff bo[ue. only a very few examples to indi– cate the path, I cannot travel it for you and if I could, while it might be enlightening for me, it would not be so for you. Esoteric knowl– edge must be absorbed directly, at firsthand and through one's own effOlts. You may be able to buy the guide in a bookstore, even take the guide Witll you for part of the way, but esoteric understanding it– self, while it is the greatest gift of all, does not come gift-wrapped. For our purposes toelay it is better to concentrate on a few examples and explore them, or at least cer– tain aspects of them, in more depth, and to show you how one adds value, again in all senses of the term, through various approaches to the physical work of att. We'll start Witll a bottle tl13t looks, on the surface, pretty unin– spiring but Ulrns out to have just those hidden deptlls that we are looking for (fig. 1). On the surface, it appears to be of ratl1er dull– colored jade, is undecorated, and in the hand is a trifle heavy, due to adequate, but far from extensive hollowing. It is the sort of bottle that might easily Ulrn up in a minor auction, excite very little interest, either frorn the cataloguer or the audience, and sell for a few hun– dred dollars at tl,e most. Let us look first at the material. There is a range of green jade wares of this distinctive, rather bluish tint which, unless in quite Fig. 2. Yuyong bowl Fig. 3. Mark on .bowl. thin sheets, is semi-opaque. It prob– ably comes from a single source which may have been a mine rather than the rivers of Xinjiang province where pebble material was found. It usually appears with– out any hint of the skin which was common to pebble material and sufficiently valued because of this to have been used frequently where it existed, although it is just possible that a single massive boul– der provided all the material. There are a number of objects made from it and most appear to be eighteenth cenulIY and Imperial. It is the calor of a series of jade inlays in furniture made for the Qianlong Emperor and still in the Palace at Beijing, in– cluding thrones, screens and deco– rative panels, and of a small but impressive group of often large Im– perial vessels most of which bear Qianlong reign-marks. There is an enormous Imperial-dragon bowl of this color displayed in the Meu'o– politan Museum at the present time. 8 Fig. 4. Bloch bottle Jade 82. It is also the calor of an extraor– dinary and very rare covered tea– bowl made for the personal use of the Qianlong emperor (fig. 2). The shape of this tea-bowl is typ– ical of the period and it bears in tl,e recessed hollow of the knob on its cover the mark Qianlong Yuyong (fig. 3), which can be translated as 'For Imperial use [by the] Qianlong [Emperor].' Another undoubtedly Imperial snuff bottle in the same material is illustrated in the first volume of the Bloch catalogue, A Treasury of Chinese SnuffBottles, as no. 82 (fig. 4). It, too, is of similar nzetping (or 'prunus-blossom vase') form and although unmarked has a typi– cally Imperial matching stopper of official's~hat form in the same mate– rial, Witll integral jade 'cork,' both COllltly features. The material is discussed there, with references to other Imperial items to establish its use at Court. It seems that this material was mainly used at Court, perhaps as an imperial prerogative, perhaps because of tl,e Qianlong emperor's personal appreciation of the color, or perhaps because either all, or most of the stone was sent as tribute to the Court and either none or very little reached private work– shops. So, our first level of meaning is revealed in the material itself,