[FROM THE COLLECTION OF BENJAMIN EVERETT GILL] GROUP OF FOUR RED-GLAZED MINIATURE WARES
QING DYNASTY, 18TH-19TH CENTURY
清 紅釉袖珍膽瓶、筒瓶及水丞 連木座（共四件）comprising: a pair of bottle vases, the base inscribed with a four-character Kangxi mark, 8.2cm high each; a cylindrical vase, 7.5cm high; and a water container of compressed globular form, 6.1cm diameter, all on wooden stands
largest: 8.2cm high
From the collection of Benjamin Everett Gill (1838-1901) from Aberdeen. Benjamin E Gill was a shipwright with Hall, Russell & Company. He built and sailed to Japan in 1869 on the Jho Sho Maru with Thomas Blake Glover who had commissioned the vessel. After they arrived in Nagasaki in January 1870, Thomas B Glover sold the boat to the Kumamoto Domain and that started the Japanese navy. A collection of Asian Art was brought back to Scotland by 1884 when Benjamin E Gill got married. The illustration shown Benjamin E Gill in Nagasaki in the early 1870s. The collection was passed down by direct descent to the current owner's father and mother, Michael Peter Gill (1934-2015) and Shiona Airlie (1953-2023), and subsequently grew. Michael P Gill was the head of art at George Watson's College, and Shiona Airlie, who had a lifelong love of everything Chinese, its history, culture and language, was the author of Thistle and Bamboo: The Life and Times of Sir James Stewart Lockhart (1989) and Scottish Mandarin: The Life and Times of Sir Reginald Johnston (2012). Sir Reginald Fleming Johnston, KCMG, CBE was a Scottish diplomat and colonial official who served as the tutor and advisor to Puyi, the last emperor of China.