For a bottle of hexagonal shape, but similarly carved on each face and obviously from the same workshops, see Hugh Moss, Victor Graham and Ka Bo Tsang, The Art of the Chinese Snuff Bottle, The J & J Collection, vol. II, p. 454, no. 272. Like that example this bottle appears to be from a group of bottles of well-known and distinctive type of bamboo work developed, apparently in the Beijing Palace workshops, during the late eighteenth century. For similar pieces still in the imperial collections in Beijing and Taipei see Zhu Peichu and Xia Genggi, Biyanshu Shihua, pl. 37. The hexagonal-shaped bottle appears to be less rare than the rectangular baluster shape of our example. Hexagonal bottles can be found in a number of the great private collections of the world, but none appears to have the rectangular baluster shape type. See Moss, Graham and Tsang, op. cit., no. 272 (formerly in the Arthur Gadsby Collection and also illustrated by Bob C. Stevens, The Collector's Book of Snuff Bottles, p. 202, no. 758); Robert W. L. Kleiner, Chinese Snuff Bottles from the Collection of Mary and George Bloch, no. 199 (formerly in the J & J Collection), and illustrated by the same author in Chinese Snuff Bottles, A Miniature Art from the Collection of Mary and George Bloch, p. 333, no. 269, and exhibited in the Hong Kong Museum of Art, March 18-June 8, 1994; Important Chinese Snuff Bottles from the Mei Ling Collection, Sotheby's, New York, March 15, 1984, lot 126, col. pl. V; and Christie's, London, The Ko Family Collection of Chinese Snuff Bottles, Part IV, June 10, 1974, lot 170

For a discussion of zhuhuang see Moss, Graham and Tsang, op. cit., pp. 454-455, and the footnote to lot 529