222.
AN ‘IMARI’ SQUARE BOTTLE WITH GILT METAL MOUNT
the bottle Qing dynasty, Kangxi period, early 18th century; the mount European, early 19th century
… cm high
Provenance: Naples, Villa della Floridiana, Museo Duca di Martina, Placido de Sangro (1829-1891) collection.
inv. n. …..
Each of the four faces of the bottle with a lakeside landscape, with mountains, pavilions, trees and figures, the gilt bronze stopper with two parallel flanges and a small finial shaped as a miniature vase.
The shape of this piece is inspired by similar stoneware or glass bottles produced in Holland in the seventeenth century and used to contain liquors or oil for lamps. Chinese ceramists begun to imitate them from the Wanli period, usually preferring a ‘blue and white’ decoration. Bottles of this type were also imported in Europe from Japan thanks to the Dutch East India Company: the earlier mention of Japanese schnaps (the Dutch word for gin) in the VOC registers date to 1687 (T. Volker, Porcelain and the Dutch East India Company, as recorded in the Dagh-Register of Batavia Castle, those of Hirado and Deshima and other contemporary papers, 1601-1682, Leiden 1954, p. 124). From the beginning of the eighteenth century the ceramists in Jingdezhen reintroduced this shape in their repertory, often using an ‘Imari‘ decoration resembling the Japanese model.
