Alchemist's Translucent Blue Glass "Dragon Teeth" Immortality Bottle II Tang Dyn

Description

ANCIENT CIVILIZATIONS
Artifacts, Antiques, & Fine Collect
i
bles
Ancient Chinese Glass Bottle
II
Contains an Alchemist’s Immortality Elixir
Translucent Blue Glass with “Dragon Teeth” Highlights in Polychrome
Additional Pictographic Figures of Dragons Painted in Black Directly on the Vessel
Tang Dynasty
618—907
NOTE:
William D. Houghton, the President of ANCIENT CIVILIZATIONS
, a State of Washington Licensed Business,
assumes all responsibility for the information contained in this description and for the English translation and transcription of the ancient Chinese graphic characters.
Furthermore, I prohibit the further dissemination of this information in any written, video, or electronic format without my expressed, written approval.
Thank You!
PROVENANCE/HISTORY
This ancient, cobalt-blue glass bottle was obtained from an old collection that once was held in Henan, China.  The collection was reportedly moved to Hong Kong.
This is the first time it has been offered for sale in the United States.
This museum quality item with its with dried contents caked inside is Extremely RARE and is Guaranteed authentic and original!
This item is legal to buy/sell under U.S. Statute covering cultural patrimony Code 2600, CHAPTER 14, and is guaranteed to be as described or your money back.
This item will come with a Certificate of Authenticity (COA) from ANCIENT CIVILIZATIONS.
SUMMARY
Item:
Chinese Glass Alchemist’s Vessel Contains an Immortality Elixir of Dragon Teeth
Material:
Translucent, cobalt blue glass with “Dragon Teeth” Highlights in Polychrome colors of red and white.
A Dragon and additional animals painted on the sides of the globular vessel.
Dynasty:
Tang
Est. Age:
618—907 AD
Approximate Measurements:
·
Height:
3.66” (93mm)
·
Diameter:
3.00 (76mm)
·
Weight:  3.8 oz.
(108gr)
Condition:
Very Good museum quality condition with no visible repairs or restorations. Some portion of the thin layer of white calcium mineral deposits has apparently flaked off or has been professionally removed by previous owner in China.
Some dried remnants of the original contents of the immortality elixir of “
Dragon Teeth
” can be seen inside the flared mouth an neck of the bottle.(See photos 3-4)
Provenance/History:
This cobalt-blue, glass Dragon Teeth vessel for an immortality elixir was obtained from an old collection that once was in Henan, China.
This is the first time it has been offered for sale in the United States.
This museum quality glass vessel with dried contents caked inside and outside the bottle is Extremely RARE.
{see photos # 3-4}
Note:
There is no guarantee as to what type of elixir or medicine actually remains in the glass vessel, as it has not been tested or chemically analyzed.
This item is legal to buy/sell under U.S. Statute covering cultural patrimony Code 2600, CHAPTER 14, and is guaranteed to be as described or your money back.
This item will come with a Certificate of Authenticity (COA) from ANCIENT CIVILIZATIONS.
DETAILS
This translucent, deep-blue, glass elixir bottle dates to approximately the great Tang Dynasty (618-907) in China.
It’s globular shape is accented by a long, flared neck with a tulip shaped mouth that was designed to carefully pour its precious contents—Immortality.
But perhaps the most stunning aspect of this particular glass vessel are the poly-chrome decorations in red and white glass that was applied to the exterior of the bottle in a repeating, v-shaped pattern.
In ancient China, this pattern was meant to symbolize “Dragon Teeth” that when ground into a powder and mixed with other magic potions were thought to be an elixir for immortality—the ultimate magic potion.
For millennia, Chinese emperors were obsessed with finding an elixir or potion that would grant them immortality.
Their doctors prescribed every type of herbal remedy from plants and animals to such ground solids of elements such as gold, lead, arsenic, and even mercury—which of course only hastened their demise.
Modern archaeologists believe that elixir called Dragon Teeth was made from the ground-up teeth and bones of prehistoric dinosaur fossils.
For millennia, the ancient Chinese ancestors could not identify the fossilized bones and teeth they knew did not come from any contemporary animal.
They assumed, therefore, the bones and teeth must have come from ancient and omnipotent Dragons, who were thought to live thousands or years.
And if the Dragons lived for thousands of years, it made sense that the powered bones of the Dragons would grant anyone who ingested them with the same properties of immortality.
The bottle has a globular body with a long, flared neck.
Inside the bottle, one can still see the Dragon Teeth Immortality residue that is now over 1,000 years old! The outside of the vase still has sections of the thick mineral and calcium and orange iron deposits from being buried for centuries.
{see macro photo # 3-4}
This small elixir bottle was recovered many years ago near the modern Chinese city of Xi’an, in the province of Shaanxi and amazingly has remained in excellent condition with no signs of repair of restoration.
The outside of this blue bottle also has the painted images of a ram, guardian lion, and other animals in black paint directly on the glass and under the period correct patina of heavy mineral and calcium deposits.
All these animals indicate it was made for a high, social status woman, very likely a member of the Imperial Court.
CHINESE EMPERORS’ QUEST FOR IMMORTALITY ELIXIRS
The search for immortality in a bottle started at the very beginning of rule by a Chinese Dynasty. Qin Shi Huang, the first Chinese Emperor and creator of the world-famous terracotta army, employed dozens of alchemists and issued an executive order empire wide to find secret, magic herbs and elixirs to permanently stave off death—sadly, after ruling for only 11 years, his obsession with elixirs of life likely led to his early death in 210 BC at the age of only 49.
More details about this quest for eternal life was found in a set of wooden slips found in 2002 at the bottom of a well in the central province of Hunan, China.
They contain an executive order from Emperor Qin Shihuang for a nationwide search for the elixir of life, along with replies from local governments, according to Xinhua News Agency article published in 2017.
This technique of writing with ink on wooden slips was the most common medium of writing in China before the appearance of paper at the beginning of the first millennium AD.
Xinhua News Agency cited Zhang Chunlong, a researcher at the Provincial Institute of Archaeology, as saying the Emperor's Decree reached even frontier regions and remote villages.
Qin Shihuang's obsession with eternal life is well-known as he was responsible for the massive underground mausoleum in the northern province of Shaanxi that is filled with nearly 8,000 terracotta soldiers built to protect him in the afterlife.
By studying the 36,000 wooden slips, archaeologists have uncovered not only the imperial order to find an 'elixir of life', but also the often embarrassed responses from local authorities who struggled to meet his demands.
The texts were written on a series of wooden slats originally connected to each other by strings.
According to Xinhua, a village called 'Duxiang' reported to the Emperor that it had failed to discover a miraculous potion, but that the search was continuing.
Another place, 'Langya', suggested that
'an herb collected from an auspicious local mountain'
might do the job.
Qin Shihuang's search for immortality was doomed to failure: he died in 210 BC after reigning for 11 years.
However, his massive tomb, that is estimated to contain an 8,000-man terracotta army and that were individually crafted around 250 BC for the emperor's tomb, is a UNESCO world heritage site.
More recently, in 2019, archaeologists who unearthed an ancient Han Dynasty tomb that was over 2,000-years-old in Henan Province, China, first thought they had found an alcoholic drink because of the strong alcoholic smell. But lab tests revealed the potion was mostly potassium nitrate and alunite, which are poisonous, naturally occurring minerals.
No one knows whether the ancient Henan Imperial family ever drank their possibly magical broth or if it caused their death.
These minerals were also in an immortality medicine mentioned in an ancient Taoist text, according to Pan Fusheng, an archaeologist on the project.
“It is the first time that mythical* ‘immortality medicines’ have been found in China,
” said Shi Jiazhen, head of China’s Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology.
“
The tomb provides valuable material for study of the life of Western Han nobles as well as the funeral rituals and customs of the period,”
Pan said.
From then on, emperors from every dynasty funded entire alchemist colleges and grand expeditions searching for the secrets to the immortality elixir.
It was common for Chinese emperors and noblemen to have their alchemists and doctors search for a recipe for an immortality potion, often with deadly results.
Many were killed during their quest as alchemists added toxic metals and minerals such as mercury, lead and arsenic to their wine and food.
Elixirs of life tended to be chock-full of poisonous chemicals. Emperors knew they had the chance of gulping what turned out to be an "elixir of death." The emperors' Taoist alchemists assured the trick was to find the perfect balance between an alchemist Yin, like mercury, and an alchemist Yang, like lead. This would eventually unlock the secret to, well, not living forever, but at least dying of a perfect balance between mercury poisoning and lead poisoning.
As a result, these toxic cocktails slowly caused several emperors to die of poison while toasting their eternal health.
Some of the smarter emperors waited until they were on their death beds to try the elixir.
But none suffered more at the hands of the literal irony than those emperors during the Great Tang Dynasty.
Known for their zest for life, the Tang lost six emperors to potion poisoning in under three centuries. That includes two, father-son pairs, the latter of whom had barely finished ordering the execution his dad's charlatan alchemist, before turning to his own alchemist to try and fail at conqueroring death.
Despite the many suicides by toxic elixirs, Chinese royals, alchemists, and scholars remained adamant about the fabled properties of mercury.
It didn't help that, occasionally, someone claimed the cure had worked.
Like the famed alchemist Wei Boyang, who tested his immortality elixir through the rigorous scientific process of feeding it to a "white dog." If successful, the dog would start flying.
If not, it would die. Spoiler Alert: the dog didn't fly.
But somehow, undeterred by the perished canine, Wei and one apprentice still drank their elixir and obviously died.
But according to contemporary texts, they did come back to life and then flew up a mountain as immortals never to be seen again. Eventually, by the 16
th
century, the practice of life elixirs started dying out, but even today in China, there are a number of herbal remedies and potions that promise to extend life.
Based on such literary references, the Taoist alchemists of ancient China sought to produce this legendary substance by themselves. The ‘recipe’ for such elixirs varies from one alchemist to another and may include ingredients from both organic (plants and animals) and inorganic (metals and minerals) materials.
One example of the former is the
Lingzhi
, which has been translated literally as the ‘Supernatural Mushroom’ and known also as the ‘Mushroom of Immortality’. This mushroom is found throughout East Asia and has been used in traditional Chinese medicine for more than two millennia. Some texts have claimed that the regular consumption of these mushrooms would make one immortal, though this has not been proven to be true.
TANG DYNASTY GLASS
There is definitive evidence of the importation of
Middle Eastern glass to China via the famous Silk Road.
After the middle of the 8
th
century, wealth Tang Dynasty families imported high-quality Islamic glass bottles from Egypt and other Middle Eastern countries were exported into China in large numbers—both for daily use and to ordain their lavish tombs for the afterlife.
Internal glass production in China also started to thrive during the Tang Dynasty and experts believe the increased expertise in glass production with Xi’an was from the influx of Central Asian immigrants to the capitol city.
Some experts have even suggested the “Silk Road” could also be called the “Glass Road.”
The main all-land Silk Road route went from Xi’an in eastern China via Kashgar in Western China, Samarkand in Central Asia and Baghdad in the Middle East to coastal cities on the Black Sea and the eastern Mediterranean such as Alexandria, Allepo and Trabazon.
COLOR SYMBOLISM IN BUDDHISM
Buddhism traveled from India into China during the 1st century AD, becoming part of Chinese life and culture alongside the other established belief systems. Statues and Buddhist-related figures like these were commissioned by followers.
The cobalt blue color used in this glass perfume bottle was not chosen just just its beauty, but also for its symbolism in the Buddhist religion. Color symbolism is used in a wide variety of fascinating ways in Buddhist art and ritual.
In Buddhism, each of five colors (pancha-varna: which are Blue, Black, Red, Green and Yellow) symbolizes a state of mind, a celestial Buddha, a part of the body, a part of the mantra word Hum, or a natural element. It is believed that by meditating on the individual colors, which contain their respective essences and are associated with a particular Buddha or bodhisattva, spiritual transformations can be achieved.
Blue minerals were the most expensive and rare color in ancient China and had to be imported from the Far East.
REFERENCES
1.
Museum of Chinese History, Beijing
2.
Shanghai Museum of Glass, Shanghai, China
3.
Hunan Museum, China
4.
Palace Museum, Beijing, China
5.
Henan Provincial Museum, China
6.
Shaanxi Archaeology Institute, China
7.
The Ancestral Landscape
, David N. Knightley, 2000
8.
The Great Bronze Age of China
, edited by Wen Fong, MET, 1980
9.
China:
A Dawn of the Golden Age.
10.
Changhua Annals of the Republic of China
(1911–1949)
11.
British Museum, Jessica Rawson
12.
Smithsonian Museum, Sackler & Freer Gallery, WDC
13.
MET, New York
14.
Chinese History Museum in Beijing, China, contains an outstanding collection of early Chinese glass objects, including a small, glass aqua cup that was found in a Han Dynasty tomb in Guangxi Province, China.
15.
See “
Ancient Glass Research Along the Silk Road
” Edited by Gan Fuxi (Chinese Academy of Sciences & Fudan University, China), Robert Brill (The Corning Museum of Glass, USA), &
Tian Shouyun
(Chinese Academy of Sciences, China). This book states that ancient Chinese glass from the Eastern Han Dynasty to the Tang Dynasty (200-700 AD) contained High Lead Silicate or PBO-SiO2.
Although chemical tests have not been run on this glass
Jue
, it is believed that it made from this glass composition.
16.
See “
Scientific Research in Early Chinese Glass
” 1991, Author: Robert H. Brill and John H. Martin, editors.
17.
Kwan, Simon; Early
Chinese Glass
; Hong Kong, 2001. ISBN. 9627 101524
18.
Susan Whitfield,
The Silk Road, Trade, Travel, War and Faith
, London, 2004
Member of the Authentic Artifact Collectors Association (AACA)
Member of the Archaeological Institute of America
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Please look carefully at the photos, taken with macro lens, since they are part of the description. Some photos taken indoors with a strong back light to show the beauty of the translucent, blue glass vessel.
It
would make a
wonderful
addition to your collection or a Super gift!
The stand
and AA battery are
not part of the sale, just there to give you a better perspective and a good view of item.
And please ask any questions before you buy.
Thanks!
International buyers are responsible for all import taxes, duties, and shipping costs.