**A CARVED SILHOUETTE AGATE SNUFF BOTTLE
Prospective purchasers are advised that several co… Read more
**A CARVED SILHOUETTE AGATE SNUFF BOTTLE

1740-1860

Details
**A CARVED SILHOUETTE AGATE SNUFF BOTTLE
1740-1860
The well-hollowed bottle of flattened form with concave lip and recessed, flat oval foot surrounded by a footrim, minimally carved on one main side to depict a bird and three eggs, the other main side undecorated, tourmaline stopper with silver collar
2 3/16 in. (5.56 cm.) high
Provenance
Sotheby's, New York, 3 June 1992, lot 476 (where the undecorated reverse is illustrated)
Hugh M. Moss Ltd.
Literature
Moss, Graham, Tsang, The Art of the Chinese Snuff Bottle. The J & J Collection, Vol. 1, no. 124
Exhibited
Hugh M. Moss Ltd., London, September 1974
Christie's, London, October 1987
Christie's, New York, 1993
Empress Place Museum, Singapore, 1994
Museum für Kunsthandwerk, Frankfurt, 1996-1997
Percival David Foundation of Chinese Art, London, 1997
Naples Museum of Art, Florida, 2002
Portland Museum of Art, Oregon, 2002
National Museum of History, Taipei, 2002
International Asian Art Fair, Seventh Regiment Armory, New York, 2003
Poly Art Museum, Beijing, 2003
Special notice
Prospective purchasers are advised that several countries prohibit the importation of property containing materials from endangered species, including but not limited to coral, ivory and tortoiseshell. Accordingly, prospective purchasers should familiarize themselves with relevant customs regulations prior to bidding if they intend to import this lot into another country.

Lot Essay

This bottle represents the silhouette style of agate carving. The style usually requires cutting through much of a thin plane of darker material to leave a shallow, silhouette design.

This bottle falls into a group of agate bottles where the variations in color in the stone provide all or part of the design, with or without surface editing. In a lecture before the 1996 ICSBS convention in Hong Kong, Hugh Moss proposed the term 'ink-play' to relate this concept in the snuff-bottle arts to principles of ink painting (reproduced JICSBS, Autumn 1997, pp. 4-16). 'Ink-play' in the painting tradition refers to the interpretation of random markings made by the free expression of the artist's brush, ink, water and surface. With respect to hardstone carvings, this effect is achieved first by reading the markings as representational imagery, and second, by achieving a balance between the natural markings and subsequent enhancements by the artist. See Moss, Graham and Tsang, A Treasury of Chinese Snuff Bottles, Vol. 2, Quartz, no. 274 for a further discussion of this genre of snuff bottles.

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