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'Tiger' Whiskey
'Tiger' whiskey, now there is a name that sums up feelings of back room brewing and high potency drinks. The bottles above were once used to hold the stuff, part of what helped keep the Chinese miners warm during the winter. The bottle themselves are ceramic, covered in a highly luminous glaze called a flambe glaze4. These glazes are very runny and result in the almost glassy appearance of the bottle. As the above pictures show this sort of bottle itself would have been a symbol difficult to understand if you were not Chinese. Similar bottles, brought up from the wreck of a Chinese trading ship have been interpreted as vases in a 'yuhuchun form'4. However, it is more likely that these bottles in particular were never meant to hold something as sweet as flowers, but rather liquid sunshine of a highly potent form. |
