Response and Responsibility

17 Bengqi as a result of my mistaken assumption in 1974, and yet none could have been from his hand. The Ko Collection has proven crucial in rehabilitating a range of mid-Qing enameled glass wares. Since we can now be certain that Ye did not make any of the above works, the collection gives us valuable comparative material to distinguish between genuine wares and his copies. 7 Another useful resource has been the recent publication of a large group of snuff bottles from the Imperial Collection in Beijing ( fig. 14 ) with more bottles of a type that Ye consistently had claimed as his. 8 These would have been among the ones he was copying, of course, but it did prove that there were many genuine examples of a type which recently had been attributed to Ye. Ye did produce masterful fakes of Palace enamels, but probably not as many as assumed. It now becomes clear that there is a group of works which is surely by him and possesses recognizable characteristics, and I am continuing the task of distinguishing his works from the genuine ones. There may be others which will remain questionable; it depends upon how many different types Ye Bengqi actually produced, whether his father produced any, and whether anybody else was making convincing copies in the late Qing or the early Republican period. There is also a group of enamels which is genuine, mid-to-late-period Qianlong Palace enamels that have been attributed to him and should now be reassigned. I address this problem in the forthcoming sixth volume of the Bloch catalogue. 9 It is my intention to continue the process of reassessing various groups of snuff bottles and to offer the results to the Society in future lectures, the next to be presented in Beijing in October 2005. NOTES: 1 Sotheby ’ s, New York, 6 April 1990, lot 61; JICSBS (Spring 1990): inside back cover; Sotheby ’ s, Hong Kong, 5 May 1994, lot 1536; and JICSBS (Winter 2001): 31, fig. 3. 2 The collecting of these catalogues has been a valuable contribution by Elsa Glickman who has generously made her collection available to me and to others. 3 Lilla S. Perry, Chinese Snuff Bottles. The Adventures and Studies of a Collector (Rutland, VT: Charles E. Tuttle Co., 1960). 4 Yang Boda, “ A Study of an Inscribed Cast Bronze Snuff Bottle Made during the Reign of Shunzhi by Cheng Rongzhang, ” JICSBS (Winter 1996): 4–9. 5 Berthold Laufer, Tobacco and Its Use in Asia (Chicago: Field Museum of Natural History, 1924), plate VIII. 6 JICSBS , Spring and Autumn 1982, Spring and Autumn 1984, Spring and Autumn 1985—the last on the enameled wares of Ye Bengqi; and Hugh Moss, By Imperial Command, an Introduction to Ch ’ ing Imperial Painted Enamels (Hong Kong: Hibiya Company Ltd., 1976). 7 The Ko Collection was formed in China and there exist detailed records of acquisition dates. I am currently engaged in pressing the present owner of these records to publish them along with photographs of each bottle. It would prove a valuable resource for a far wider audience than the two of us and the occasional collector who contacts him for information. 8 Gugong bowuyuancang wenwu zhenpin daji. Biyanhu — “ The Complete Collection of Treasures of the Palace Museum. Snuff Bottles ” —Shanghai: 2002, nos. 3, 4, 5, 6 and 22. 9 Hugh Moss, Victor Graham, and Ka Bo Tsang, A Treasury of Chinese Snuff Bottles. The Mary and George Bloch Collection , vol. 6 (Hong Kong: Herald International Ltd., 2005).