.jpg?w=1)
Lot Essay
Brilliantly carved in the form of a recumbent stag, this justifiably famous bottle is one of two known of identical subject and material and which are clearly by the same hand. The second bottle, formerly in the Gerry Mack Collection and now in the collection of Denis Low, is illustrated by R. Kleiner, Treasures from the Sanctum of Enlightened Respect, p. 211, no. 182, and which is also reproduced in Chinese Snuff Bottles No. 3, p. 23, fig. 13, and by E. B. Curtis, "Footnote to an Album," JICSBS, Spring 1985, p. 117, along with an illustration of the bottle from an early volume of life-sized watercolour paintings of a collection of snuff bottles. Although Curtis suggests that the album either represents the collection of Guy Mayer or George Fisher, subsequent research has linked the album conclusively to William Bragge, the author of Bibliotheca Nicotiana and one of the earliest serious collectors of snuff bottles in Europe.
Both transcendent masterpieces of the medium, the Low bottle and the J & J bottle are virtually identical, differing only in the angles of the heads, no doubt dictated by the need to use the suitably marked area of the material as the animal's eye. In both cases the exciting material is used to its utmost advantage to create both a distinctive snuff bottle and a superb small sculpture.
Both transcendent masterpieces of the medium, the Low bottle and the J & J bottle are virtually identical, differing only in the angles of the heads, no doubt dictated by the need to use the suitably marked area of the material as the animal's eye. In both cases the exciting material is used to its utmost advantage to create both a distinctive snuff bottle and a superb small sculpture.