Details
6.8 cm. (258 in.) high
Provenance
The Reginald and Lena Palmer Collection.
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Lot Essay

Ye Bengqi, the third son of Ye Zhongsan (1875-1945), is justifiably famous for his faithful recreations of Imperial enameled glass wares, particularly snuff bottles. He would memorize the patterns of authentic enameled glasswares on display in the Palace Museum in Beijing and attempt to replicate them in the family's Apricot Grove Studio. In early 1974, shortly before his death, Ye Bengqi admitted in an interview with Hugh Moss to producing perhaps thirty to forty copies of "Imperial Palace" enamels between about 1925 and 1940; he also identified a number of published and photographed works shown to him at the time as his own. Ye's copies are so impressive that, for half a century, they convinced experts all over the world that they were genuine Qianlong products; conversely, some genuine examples, not as technically proficient, were subsequently questioned. Today, Ye's works are treated as masterpieces in their own right.
For a lengthy discussion of enameled wares produced by the Ye Family in Beijing, see H. Moss, The Apricot Grove Studio, Part III: Enameled Glass Wares, Journal of the International Chinese Snuff Bottle Society, Baltimore, Autumn 1985, pp. 116–30. See also Moss, Graham, and Tsang, The Art of the Chinese Snuff Bottle. The J & J Collection, pp. 352–3, no. 205, for a discussion of Ye Bengqi's talents as a copyist. For more recent updates on Ye's works, see Hugh Moss, Mysteries of the Ancient Moon, Journal of the International Chinese Snuff Bottle Society, Baltimore, Spring 2006.
Another outstanding example of Ye's work, on a bottle of similar tapering, high-shouldered form from the Meriem Collection, was sold at Christie's New York,19 September 2007, lot 620. See also another enameled white glass snuff bottle by Ye, previously from the Collection of Alice B. McReynolds, bearing a Qianlong nianzhi mark, sold at Christie's New York, 21 March 2013, lot 1065.

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