Antique Chinese and Japanese Porcelain collector's help and info page

GLOSSARY

Guyuexuan (Ku Yueh Hsuan)

Guyuexuan, often translated as Ancient Moon Pavillion, is commonly used as a name of a highly detailed enamel decoration originally found on glass snuff bottles. One possibly explanation to this name is that the reason why the pavillion was name "Ku" meaning old or ancient and "Yueh" meaning moon, is because the two words together make up the surname "Wu" which in that case could be the studio name of Director Wu of the Imperial Glass Works in Beijing around 1680, which incidently matches with the first appearance of this decoration in the Kangxi period, Qing Dynasty. The main difficulty in the productiopn of enameled glass was in the fact that the melting point of the enamels was almost the same as that of glass why only small articles such as snuff bottles could be made. In the Qianlong period the Director of Imperial potteries, Tang Ying, was asked to adapt this decoration onto porcelain.

HOME

A

B

C

D

E

F

G

H

I

J

K

L

M

N

O

P

Q

R

S

T

U

V

W

X

Y

Z