1800-1850

The blue-ground bottle is a rare example of an underglaze monochrome snuff bottle. Known as "powder blue" in the West, the mottled blue effect was difficult to achieve in a uniform manner. After glazing a piece with with the color, while the body was still humid, the painter would blow across the surface through a bamboo tube covered with gauze. Wares decorated with a powder-blue ground were popular in the Kangxi period, when the technique was discovered, and experienced a renewed popularity in the nineteenth century.