Item description / significance
This is an inside-painted (inner-painted, reverse painted) glass ball depicting an adaptation of the Song dynasty handscroll painting “Along the River During the Qingming Festival.”
Bought where
in Singapore, at Peter’s house of bric-a-brac
Age and origin
Painted in 1992, according to the inscription, probably in Hengshui, Hebei Province, in northern China
What I like about it
I bought it mainly because I recognized the famous source painting. I’d stared at an animated version of it on display at, I think, Tokyo Haneda Airport when I got re-routed through there in 2017. The level of detail is impressive.
See below for information on the inscription, background on the original handscroll painting, and more photos of this ball.
Inscription
The inscription begins at the top right.
First, it describes the subject: 清明上河图, Qīngmíng shànghé tú, “Along the River During the Qingming Festival.”
Then it gives the year and season when it was made: 壬申年, rénshēn nián, 1992, 冬月, dōngyuè, winter months).
The year is written using the traditional 60-year cycle system, which involves combining one of 10 “heavenly stems” with one of 12 “earthly branches”.
Then it says who made it: 建广, Jiànguǎng, Jianguang, 作, zuò, work.
Inspiration
This is an adaptation of part of a huge, old, famous, important painting, sometimes called “Along the River During the Qingming Festival.” Scholars debate the meaning of the title, and sometimes call the painting something else in English, fwiw.
The central section of the scroll, which is produced in the inner painted ball, is the “rainbow bridge”:
Inside painting
Inside painting, also known as inner painting or reverse painting, is a type of national-level cultural heritage associated with Hengshui, Hebei Province. The oldest and highest form of this art is the inside painting of snuff bottles.
To be honest, snuff bottles in general don’t interest me much. I think that’s because snuff strikes me as not only exotic and historical and thus outside my experience, but also vaguely taboo (and/or gross). Also, inside-painted snuff bottles are theoretically functional but actually useless as containers, and yet the shape, material, and stoppers of the nonfunctional “bottles” distract from the painting.
In contrast, glass spheres are inherently empty, plain, and pleasingly symmetrical in all three dimensions, and there’s a trippy magnification effect that I think would make it harder (and thus more impressive) to plan and execute a coherent painting inside a sphere than to paint a picture inside a snuff bottle.
I acknowledge the difference between original artworks and products like this one that copy the subject matter of existing works. Still, it doesn’t have to be original to look amazing or to require extreme skill and dedication!
Photos
This treasure is currently in storage, but I took some photos before putting it away. Here are all of them:
