1760-1880

The snuff bottle artist was truly masterful in his maximum use of the color variations in the material, using his extraordinary talent and boundless imagination to create an evocative scene with an intimate scene, the areas of color employed to suggest the dappled sunlight and swaying flora, distant colors seen through the matrix of tree branches, flowers and shrubs. This web of secondary color is captured by leaving much of the stone uncarved, with just enough in relief to effect a sympathetic rendering of the scene and to define the main subject, the playful cat, the flitting butterfly and the pond of graceful, fan-tailed goldfish. The subject also recalls the rebus jinyu mantang ('May you have a prosperous household').