Featured Signed Snuff (?) Vase Shaped Bottle

Looking for some comments on this unusually shaped reverse painted bottle. It is 3 inches high and approximately 1 inch in diameter at its widest point. Its neck has a decorative painted gold border. It looks like a tiny vase. The painting is exquisite. The cap appears to be jade. Anyone recognize this?

 

All those cranes should make it Japanese. Is there a spoon attached to the stopper?

 

It's glued tight shut but I can see a white spoon through the glass. Japanese - I'll start to search there. Thanks for the idea.

 

This one from ebay has similar gold trim.



Vintage Jade Top Inside Painted Chinese Snuff Bottle Artistic Institute Shantou | eBay

 

We're onto something. Here is a post by @Any Jewelry with a similar gilded bottle from the Shantou Institute.'
Chinese Snuff Bottles, cameo, carved, and..... | Page 3 | Antiques Board (antiquers.com)

 

I saw a video of an Asian woman painting one once.....absolutely amazing the patience required to do it!!!!!!! But it was some time ago and don't remember where or when....sorry!

 

I am always amazed at the patience and skill. I have a few pieces but this by far is the most astonishing. The artist had to get the brushes through that neck and paint all those cranes in such detail. If you saw this in person, you would be amazed. It is extremely small. The diameter is an inch.

 

That's painted from the inside?? Wow.
This is one of the reasons I've become addicted to art - to me it's amazing that some people can see something in their head & bring it to life in a painting, or a statue, or a snuff bottle - when I've tried to paint or draw something the 3 year old neighbor's girl laughed and asked me what it was supposed to be?!

 

You found it.
Yours is an elegant beauty of the type called "A Hundred Cranes". Cranes were an important symbol in China as well as Japan.
It was either made by a student at the Technical and Artistic Institute of Shantou or by the Peach River Studios. I'm sure there is a connection between the two, because vase shapes, the unusual thinness of the glass, the delicate paintwork, the use of gilding, and the high jade caps are exactly the same.
Maybe the two are one and the same.

This is the most complete info I could find on Peach River:
"At the 1974 Canton Trade Fair a new school of inside painting made its appearance: the Peach River Painting Studio. ...
these (bottles) were merely vaselike containers making no pretense of being snuff bottles. ... The glass of these bottles is extremely thin." - Stevens

"When art work first resumed at the institute, the Cultural Revolution was still in progress and all works would be signed with
"The Peach River Painting Studio" instead of the painter's name. ... The studio also used used three other names: Ge Lang
- signed on figure paintings, Tie Fu on animal paintings, and Hong Sheng on landscape paintings."
http://snuffbottlecollector.com/_antique/peach_river/peach_river_1b.htm

This one is the same shape as yours:
http://snuffbottlecollector.com/_antique/peach_river/peach_river_10.htm

On the same location of both:
"This works is definitely painted in 1970s at Peach River Studio (produce in Guangdong province Shantou city)" Wang Guanyu
http://snuffbottlecollector.com/_antique/peach_river/peach_river_5.htm

So both are in Shantou, and the owner of the site believes Peach River still made bottles in the 80s and possibly the 90s.
Mine was originally sold in the late 80s, and presumably made shortly before.
I wonder if the studio had become part of the Technical and Artistic Institute of Shantou, or maybe they were always part of the Institute? Making TAIS bottles Peach River bottles and vice versa?

The box of this one is signed the same as my box, Zhong Guo Shan Tou Nei cai Yar hu, China, Shantou:
http://snuffbottlecollector.com/_antique/peach_river/peach_river_8.htm
According to the owner of the site, the bottle inside is Peach River, made in 1985.

This is the first page of his Peach River Studios collection:
http://snuffbottlecollector.com/_antique/peach_river/peach_river_0.htm

 

I posted it on the same page as my bottle above. Here it is again:

A video of An Hong, the Chinese lady who lives in the Netherlands and does inside painting. She uses special brushes which she makes herself.
This one is in English:


This is her site. In Dutch, but art is a language in itself:
http://www.chineseschilderkunst.nl/over anhong.html

 

Wonderful and detailed information as usual. I am amazed you found a bottle with the same shape. I looked for hours. I see the snuff bottle collector site has a raft of great information. This is the first better bottle that I have found (I search in the wild, though, not much has come my way.) I am having a great time following up on your links and very much appreciate them.
The site also discusses that the Peach River studio and the Yue school are one in the same. Just as you stated above. The comment was that the Peach River Studio had lesser quality of painting. Someone who could do excellent work also must have been there, as the 100 cranes are so precisely done, and each is slightly different. Your research and knowledge have immensely increased my joy in this find. Thank you so much.

 

I have several pieces of reverse painting, but nothing of this quality. I, too, am in wonder.

 

Wonderful to see it in action. She has such patience but such joy. I hadn't realized that the artist started from a flat drawing and somehow was able to translate in her case into a contour. Thank you for showing this.

 

You have my deepest empathy!