Lot 134

Lot 134
Treasury 6, no.1230 (‘Coloured Continuity’)
HK$30,0000

A moulded 'famille-rose' porcelain 'squirrel' snuff bottle

Famille-rose enamels on a creamy-white glaze on porcelain; with a flat lip; moulded and painted as a squirrel clinging to a bunch of grapes growing atop two leaves, the severed stem on his left side, the black pupils of the eyes surrounded by brown glaze with traces of original gilding; the neck with a wash of brown glaze and traces of gold enamel; the interior unglazed
Jingdezhen, 1790–1830
Length: 7.68 cm
Mouth/lip: 0.56/1.2 cm
Stopper: gold enamel on porcelain, moulded with a formalized floral design; John Charlton, London, circa 1972

Provenance:
Robert Hall (1985)

Published:
Treasury 6, no.1230

With what appear to be the earliest models of naturalistic moulds, the mouth is simply a hole placed in the form (in the top of the head for models of Liu Hai or the upright Buddhist lions, or, if a reclining Buddhist lion, in the brocade ball between its paws). As the naturalistic form adjusts to its snuff-bottle function, a more standard snuff-bottle neck begins to be added to the naturalistic form, perhaps because it is easier to choose a standard stopper for a bottle with a neck, thus making life easier for the owner. A collar tends to look out of place on a bottle with no defined neck or lip (imagine it on any of the human-figural forms, for instance). This bottle has a distinct neck, looking as if it emerges from a snuff bottle enclosed by the naturalistic form. By the time one arrives at the unquestioned later Qing version of the form (see for instance Moss, Graham, and Tsang 1993, nos. 243 and 244), the neck is standard. The makers of that small group of later-Qing masterpieces, however, were unusually artistic about their wares. In the present case, they transformed the neck into an elongated segment of the main vine.

This distinctive, pointy-nosed squirrel was one of the early standards. An example from a different mould appears in Chinese Snuff Bottles, no. 5, p. 58, fig. 40, with an even smaller head and a pointed nose, but obviously inspired by the same model. It, too, leaves the animal uncoloured and features coloured leaves and what we might call psychedelic grapes, painted in a variety of different and unlikely colours. Two other bottles of this model, from different moulds, are in the Gulland Bequest to the Victoria & Albert Museum in 1905 (White 1990, plate 115, no. 2), and Low 2002, no. 194.