Chinese cameo glass has been produced since the 18th century. It appears to be more chunky than European cameo glass and often incorporates Chinese symbolic motifs such as butterflies and bats. Chrysanthemums are also a popular design in Chinese art.
Below are some examples of Chinese cameo glass including a small white vase overlaid with blue bats and an Imperial red and white double-gourd vase.
This small opaque, white, glass vase is decorated with overlaid blue glass bats. Bats are a visual pun for happiness and five bats are a visual pun for the Five Happinesses ‘wufu’ – wishes for wealth, health, longevity, a virtuous life and a natural death in old age
Reference: The British Museum.
An Imperial Red Overlay Glass double-gourd Bottle vase
Qianlong four-character Mark in a square and of the Period, Beijing Palace Workshops
The semi-transparent dark red overlay beautifully carved with a scrolling double-gourd vine with five-petalled flower-heads and simple leaves that rises from a small pierced rockwork to one side of the lower gourd and gently follows an anti-clockwise motion around the lower gourd, finally rising upward and continuing in the same direction around the upper gourd, a band of overlay at the rim, on a short circular red-overlay foot ring, the white glass base with a double-squared Imperial mark.
Sold for US$100,312.50 inc. premium at Bonham’s in 2022
A PAIR OF 19TH CENTURY CHINESE BULBOUS CAMEO GLASS VASES bearing four-character Qing dynasty mark to the bases. Each with overlaid designs of birds amidst scrolling prunus blossom sprays and chrysanthemum flower heads 16cm high
Sold for £1,500 at Hutchinson Scott Auctioneers in 2020
