Lot 102
Treasury 1, no. 164
HK$52,500

Nephrite; well hollowed with a concave foot surrounded by a flat foot rim
Possibly imperial, perhaps palace workshops, Beijing, 1740–1880
Height: 6.59 cm
Mouth/lip: 0         .49/1.50 cm
Stopper: jadeite; gilt-silver collar

Provenance:
Hugh M. Moss Ltd (Hong Kong, 1993)

Published:
Treasury 1, no. 164

The lovely soft beige colour of this piece of material is rather unusual for nephrite.
From one angle there appear to be two areas where colour from the surface of a pebble may have penetrated deeply into the core leaving darker brown lines, one of which is quite long. These are invisible from another angle, which reveals only a slight variation in the beige colouring within the stone. This produces the very subtle effect of a rainbow-shaped curve in a paler colour in the upper portion of the body.

When the bottle is turned in the hand, these paler markings exactly link up with the longer brown lines and the arc is inverted, so that the overall effect is of a wave-like line around the upper half of the body. There was certainly no intent on the part of the artist for these lines to be read pictorially. We point them out mainly to draw attention to the importance in aesthetics of considering every possible nuance of meaning, however subtle it may appear.

Apart from the material, the main appeal of this bottle lies in the subtlety of form and in the rarity of the cylindrical form in snuff bottles other than porcelain. The workmanship here is not complex; there is no fancy relief carving and no virtuoso hollowing. Instead, the artist has chosen to make a simple statement say a lot.

The hollowing is very well done, following the outer contour up into the shoulders and around the body, but leaving a fairly heavy foot (0.52 cm). This feature was clearly a matter of choice rather than a question of saving time or effort, as the detailing is superb, with a perfectly circular interior base and a neat right-angled wall rising up from it. This cannot have been an easy task through so small a mouth and with the restrictions of a long, only slightly flaring inner cylinder to the neck. It speaks volumes for the commitment of the artist that he would go to so much trouble on a feature invisible to the user, particularly if the bottle were full of snuff.

The formal integrity is also perfect, with the unusual circular concavity of the foot, the neat foot rim, and the detailing of neck and lip, all superbly carved. It is the subtlety of the shaping, however, that transforms a perfectly executed bottle into a serious sculptural statement. The cylinder tapers upwards toward the neck before curving inward at the shoulders; the difference in diameter between the lower and upper ends of the cylinder is only 1.3 mm, but the visual effect is considerable, giving a far greater impression of sturdiness than would have been achieved with a straight-sided cylinder.

The final touch of genius is found in the even slighter flaring of the neck to offset the taper of the body, which is a tiny difference (less than 0.5 mm) but again visually powerful.

There are few clues as to origin and dating. The heavy base might indicate a palace workshop source, as might the use of flawed material. The cylindrical form is another possible clue to such an attribution. There is an inscribed cylindrical chalcedony bottle from the collection of Yongxing 永瑆 (1752 – 1823; Kleiner 1987, no. 142), which, although smaller in size, is of very similar form, even though the slightly flaring neck terminates with an upper neck rim. The neck rim is a typical palace feature on hardstone snuff bottles, and it is likely that Yongxing, the eleventh son of the Qianlong emperor, had ready access to the palace workshops.

If the two are connected formally, a date from the late-Qianlong into the early-Daoguang period would be the most likely, although we have left a broader possible dating range. This would also tie in with the large number of cylindrical porcelain snuff bottles that seem to have been made from the end of the Qianlong period onwards. Many of these with blue-and-white-dragons and unglazed bases incised with concentric circles are obviously imperial in nature.

This is not the Sotheby’s sale catalogue. This is a product of Hugh Moss for the purposes of this website. For the catalogue details please refer to Sotheby’s website or request a copy of a printed sale catalogue from Sotheby’s.