AN UNUSUAL AND RARE JASPER BOTTLE

FROM A WEST COAST PRIVATE COLLECTION

Details

AN UNUSUAL AND RARE JASPER BOTTLE
18TH/19TH CENTURY

Of rounded square shape, carved through a mustard-brown layer with a foreigner smoking a pipe while sitting atop a Bactrian camel, the ground of a deep olive-green color carved with rockwork, the reverse plain and of reddish-brown tone, stopper

Lot Essay

This design is extremely rare. Presumably the foreigner is smoking tobacco, perhaps some kind of pun on the contents of the snuff bottle itself

For a chalcedony example with a figure, less obviously a foreigner, sitting atop a camel, though not apparently smoking, see Sotheby's, Fine Chinese Snuff Bottles, New York, November 22, 1988, lot 68, and another in the Hong Kong Museum of Art exhibition, Chinese Snuff Bottles, 1977, Catalogue no. 181, p. 82