Puzzling Evidence: Red-crowned Crane Cannister with Charms Featuring Bats, Tassels, and Auspicious Symbols

A small cylinder jar featuring 3 medallions of red-crowned cranes separated by hanging charms featuring bats, beads, tassels, and auspicious symbols.  The jar measures 10x7cm, narrower than the caddies typically part of smoking sets in the Republic era. The jar is comparatively heavy, possibly due to lead weighting beneath the interior lid and body enamel. At any rate, it won’t tip over easily. The lid is slightly domed.

In Chapter 6, page 124 of the book Cloisonne: Chinese Enamels from the Yuan, Ming, and Qing Dynasties, the chapter author Therese Tse Bartholomew mentions a rebus composed of a bat carrying a stone chime with two fish hanging below. “This combination is a pun for fuqing youyu (福慶有餘), or ‘May there be an abundance of blessings and joy.’”  What the other two pendants on the jar are rebuses for, I leave for those more knowledgeable to decipher. Observe that two jars feature a floral design combined with a base featuring the gourd & iron crutch of the immortal Li Tieguai; a rectangular box further on in the pictures also features the gourd & crutch, this time with a design of scholar's objects. The cranes are longevity symbols. [2015 blog post at the link: https://www.beadiste.com/2015/02/puzzling-evidence-red-crowned-crane-in.html ]

An internet search revealed other examples of this jar, some identical, some differing in small details, some with different decoration schemes or cloisonne technique (for instance, open work/golden ground).  A distinctive characteristic, however, is a cloisonne base instead of the simple turquoise blue enamel often used. An auction set featuring 3 jars and a tray is illustrated to perhaps give a better idea of what this workshop was capable of, assuming all 4 were acquired at the same time.

There are enough of these cannisters around that I wonder if they were produced as a group, on commission, perhaps as small gifts, the distinctly Chinese design with the good fortune symbols perhaps catering to Chinese recipients rather than foreigners?  Similar jars featuring designs with scholar’s objects also seem likely to have been targeted to Chinese recipients (foreigners finding dragons more appealing?).  Cloisonne opium boxes, likewise decorated with scholar’s objects & cloisonne bases, can be readily found and might have been manufactured by the same workshop, catering to the gentry and literati? I selected a few from the numerous listings on eBay that feature a similar construction of the metal base (copper or paktong) upon which the cloisonne work was done.

At the end of the slides is a comparison between this cannister and a small, heavy caddy featuring Lao TianLi-style dragons chasing the pearl of wisdom.  This style and weight of this dragon jar seem consistent with construction around 1900-1920. Is the black base enamel perhaps an indicator of Yang TianLi manufacture, or by one of the other workshops operating 1890-1920s?

Puzzling evidence.

[Note that pictures can be opened in a new tab and expanded a bit for more detail]

Opium box

Listed as an opium box, but the 8 x 4.5 x 8.5cm dimensions could also accommodate the size of cigarettes that were available at the time.
 

Puzzling evidence: Rare Open Ground Transparent Amber and Opaque Lime Green Enamels in Chinese Cloisonne

 From a private collection, a mysterious and very unusual Republic-era Chinese cloisonne jar featuring an entire background of unwired transparent enamel in an amber or tea color.

While there are works from the Republic era (1912-1949) that do not utilize a background diaper of small motifs such as clouds, spirals, and the wan fret to hold the enamel to the metal base, generally the composition of the main design is such that there aren’t too-large gaps between the wiring.  See, for example, my blog post on the “Old Man” workshop [last slide below].

https://www.beadiste.com/2015/11/puzzling-evidence-hedda-morrison-and.html

The enamel seems to be a light amber or tea color rather than colorless, but is highly transparent, as one can in some places see the underlying seams and discolored spots in the copper base (observe the tail of the squirrel in the small jar in the slides following). It’s difficult to discern how much of the color is in the enamel and how much is due to the copper base showing through.

When did this amber enamel come into use in Chinese cloisonne?  Sometime around the 1920s seems likely, as exemplified by the lobed dish and vase set in the pictures below.  It was definitely in use in the 1940s, often applied over white and colored millefleur designs.

The floral design on the amber jar is striking – a mysterious orchid-like plant.  I’ve only seen one other example like it, a little 6.5-inch vase that I purchased ten years ago because it had such an unusual floral design. This vase also has no background diaper, and the black enamel upon close inspection shows a cloud of light blue speckles, giving it a perpetual dusty look despite its smooth glossy polish. The vase seems to have been given a black base coat, and the colored and amber enamels applied over that. Odd.

Can anyone identify the plant?  I wonder if it was decorating a window in the workshop, or if it’s the artist’s imagination of something seen in a garden once upon a time. Observe that both the jar and the vase feature two variants of the flower - one solid red, the other multi-colored.

The transparent enamel over bare copper shows up again, this time combined with a diaper-less opaque green background enamel in a squirrel-and-grapes jar in my collection.

Unwired lime green enamel makes another appearance in a pair of large bowls with a distinctive floral border (both have enamel bases stamped “CHINA”), as well as in a small box likely from the “Old Man” workshop. In contrast to their wired exteriors and rims, the interiors of the bowls seem unpolished, the enamel displaying a somewhat uneven glossy texture usually seen in unpolished base enamels.

The question that comes to mind is, “How much Japanese influence was there in the use of these unwired enamels?”  Japanese cloisonne after 1870 developed entirely different enamels and design compositions from the Chinese, tapping German expertise in glass chemistry, often eliminating altogether the use of a wired background diaper. If there was even slight Japanese influence in the chemistry, manufacture, and use of these Chinese amber and opaque green enamels, when did it begin? 

The large exhibitions in Europe and the United States during the early 20^th century, it is now obvious in retrospect, considered Japanese cloisonne modern and fashionable, while Chinese works were regarded as quaint. It seems unlikely that the Chinese workshops did not become aware of this prejudice. Were the amber enamel pieces efforts to look more “modern”? The extensive unwired area of the amber jar is definitely not a common Chinese design; even if a background diaper is not used, the wired design elements are typically spaced to form a relatively dense pattern compared to this jar.

Were there German and Japanese foreign commercial investments in glass industry from circa 1900 in partnership with Chinese businesses in Shandong, home of the historic Boshan glass industry? Did the Chinese enamel manufacturers tap this new expertise and provide the Beijing workshops with smoother enamel recipes that could be used with fewer wires? German colonial territories in Shandong were transferred to the Japanese in 1919 in the aftermath of World War I, but Chinese protest successfully ousted the Japanese in 1922.  Per Wikipedia: “In a victory for China, the Japanese leasehold on Shandong was returned to China in June, 1922. Japan, however, maintained its economic dominance of the railway and the province as a whole.”

The 1930s-40s were difficult economic times in China, thanks to worldwide economic depression and constant warfare between warlords, Nationalists, Communists, and Japanese.  World War II began early in China with the Japanese occupation of Beijing in 1937.  Many cloisonne workshops closed as workers fled the city, but some did manage to resolutely survive with much smaller workforces into the 1950s despite the hard times. There is an attitude that these surviving workshops produced stereotyped and boring designs, but that doesn’t seem to be the case to me; it seems more accurate to say they streamlined their meager resources to create modern abstract versions of traditional floral designs.

In what decades do you think these pieces were likely produced? 1920s? 1930s? 1940s? 1950s?

Puzzling evidence.

[Tip o’ the hat to J.A. for granting permission to use photos of the amber jar.]

Puzzling Evidence: the 19th Century TianLi 天利 Workshop

Zhou Chunbing’s 周春兵 2022 book Enamel Bureau: Research and Collection of Famous Cloisonné Workshops in Modern China 珐琅局: 中国近代景泰蓝名作坊研究与收藏 features a discussion in Chapter 2 of the mysterious 19^th century Tian Li workshop.

One of the character seals of Tian Li works is shown in figure 1-2-12 on page 52 of the book, but the cloisonne bowl to which it is attached is not shown. I thought readers might be interested in what this elaborate floral dragon and fenghuang lobed bowl looks like, as archived on the Liveauctioneers website:

https://www.liveauctioneers.com/item/53150325_chinese-cloisonne-enamelled-bowl-of-lobe-woking-surrey 

https://www.purpleculture.net/burea-of-enamel-research-and-collection-of-famous-cloisonne-workshops-in-modern-china-p-34508/

UPDATE: Another signed Tian Li work showed up, an elaborate dragon bowl sold at auction in California in 2016. The logo is quoted on page 51, figure 1-2-11 in Zhou's book.

UPDATE: An alert reader spotted another Tian Li marked piece on offer at a Chinese auction (July 2026). 11cm across, 10cm high, weighs 700g (heavy)

listed by Xianyu 闲鱼 vendor 全品晚清景泰蓝爱好者. You need to have Xianyu app and Alipay to access the listing