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photographer E-Yaji.

The Mary and George Bloch Collection: Part I  
Bonham's, Hong Kong, 28 May 2010: Lot 86 

Lot 86

Lot 86
Treasury 3, no. 417
HK$312,000

The Belfort Imperial Malachite

Malachite; reasonably well hollowed with a flat lip and concave foot
Imperial, 1730–1830
Height: 5.56 cm
Mouth/lip: 0.64/1.98 cm
Stopper: mother-of-pearl; turquoise finial; coral collar

Lot 86 Provenance:
Y. F. Yang (1977)
Belfort Collection

Published:
L’Estampille, February 1979, p. 44
Distance, April–May 1979, p. 32
Jutheau 1980, p. 119, fig. 1
Kleiner 1987, no. 180
Treasury 3, no. 417, and front and back covers

Exhibited:
L’Arcade Chaumet, Paris, June 1982
Sydney L. Moss Ltd, London, 1987
Creditanstalt, Vienna, May–June 1993

Lot 86 Commentary
Malachite is a hydrated copper carbonate occurring typically in the oxidation zone of copper deposits where it is associated with other ores of copper and is the product of their alteration. It is a soft stone, about 4 on the Mohs scale, and easily scratched with a steel blade. It is of widespread occurrence, found as a rule wherever copper is found. One major deposit is found in the Ural mountains in Russia. It is not one of the minerals listed as being mined in Xinjiang, but copper is found in various parts of China, such as in Guangdong, Hubei, Jiangxi, Inner Mongolia, Gansu, Tibet, and Yunnan, where there are extensive deposits. Some of these areas became major producers of malachite in very recent times; Yangchun in Guangdong, for example, began mining it only in 1966. But surely the odd piece was picked up in these areas and presented to the court before systematic production began. Malachite is found at the sites of Shang dynasty copper works and was also ground up and used in as a pigment for architectural painting and other applications. The commentary on this bottle in Treasury 3 may be consulted for additional information.

Malachite snuff bottles are rare, considering how readily available the material must have been. It is likely that its softness and brittleness may have depleted an originally larger body of examples, as with other fragile stones, or it may be that it was simply not used so often for carving bottles. There are none listed in the Bragge Collection in 1880 (see under Treasury 3, no. 401) and the stone is not mentioned by Zhao Zhiqian in the 1860s (JICSBS, Autumn 1991). Early examples are rare, considerably rarer, for instance, than early turquoise bottles. Stevens 1976> illustrates only two (nos. 629 and 669) while including ten early turquoise bottles. For other examples of this rare group, see Friedman 1990, no. 59; Lawrence 1996, no. 34; Sotheby’s, London, 24 April 1989, lot 432, and Chinese Snuff Bottles No. 1, p. 19, middle left.

None of these are of a material like this, distinguished by its extraordinary agate-like markings of evenly distributed dark, almost black, and bright green striated patches with small ‘eyes’ dotted throughout the material quite spectacularly. There is, however, one other that is exactly like this material. It is the only malachite published from the imperial collection, in this case from the Beijing portion (Gugong bowuyuan 1995, no. 148), of a shape which is typical of palace glass bottles and with a delightfully outrageous gilt-bronze and coral imperial stopper. Two Qianlong-marked glass bottles of similar profile, although both are a little more bulbous, are in Snuff Bottles of the Ch’ing Dynasty, nos. 67 and 69 to establish an imperial form. Even without the material coincidence, this beautifully made compressed oval form would be standard for imperial production which lends credence to an imperial attribution even if we are not so certain where it was made.

It is, formally, one of the finest of all malachite snuff bottles, although some of those cited above have been compromised by having chips trimmed from the neck, or other re-carving to remove the inevitable attrition of time with this delicate material. This one is, miraculously, still in excellent condition and entirely of its original form.

Of all malachite bottles, this has the most extraordinary potential for ink-play games (see discussion under Treasury 2, no. 274). The ‘eyes’ and feathery natural markings allow a wonderful interpretation as various birds. Chickens, a waddle of baby ducks, an owl, and a rather alarming buzzard all leap from the stone immediately, but the longer one looks, the more they metamorphose into other birds and groups of birds. It is one of the most psychedelic of all natural ink-play snuff bottles.




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