A PICTORIAL SILHOUETTE AGATE BOTTLE

OFFICIAL SCHOOL, 1750-1840

Details

A PICTORIAL SILHOUETTE AGATE BOTTLE
Official School, 1750-1840
Of rounded-rectangular shape, the well-hollowed pale grayish-beige body set off by dark brown markings ingeniously carved to create an auspicious design of five bats flying around double gourd, stopper
2 1/16in. (5.3cm.) high

Provenance

Sotheby's, New York, 22 November 1988, lot 173.

Lot Essay

This striking example of the silhouette wares of the Official School (see lot 115) is decorated with a popular, broadly auspicious subject of five bats (wufu) emerging from a gourd (a symbol of the otherworldly realm of the Daoist adept). For the symbolism of five bats, see lot 34.

For a silhouette agate bottle with the same subject, still in the Imperial Collection, see Chang Lin-sheng, Snuff Bottles in the Collection of the National Palace Museum, Taipei, 1991, p. 232, no. 321.

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