A FINE RED-OVERLAY SNOWSTORM-GROUND GLASS BOTTLE

細節

A FINE RED-OVERLAY SNOWSTORM-GROUND GLASS BOTTLE
18TH/19TH CENTURY

Of wide pear shape, delicately carved through the deep red overlay with a boy on a buffalo stretching to retrieve his ribboned hat blown away in the wind, all near a tall pine tree and rockwork, the reverse side with a fat cat crouching under the leaves of a lily in a predatory pose glaring at a butterfly above, all on a dense snowstorm ground, minute chips, stopper

拍品專文

See Robert W. L. Kleiner, Chinese Snuff Bottles from the Collection of Mary and George Bloch, p. 92, fig. 29, for a Yangzhou seal school bottle depicting a cat watching butterflies where the author states that the words for 'cat' and 'octogenarian', mao, are phonetically close, and that the rebus expresses the wish that the recipient should live to be seventy or eighty (butterflies symbolize the numeral seventy)