This bottle is one of the masterpieces of the medium, with impeccable formal integrity, superb relief carving, perfect distinction between relief and ground planes, and an excellent finish. These characteristics are further enhanced by the emphasis given by the red details of the upper layer of the overlay, which are subtly used in a very unusual manner.

There is another fine early bottle with a closely related design in red overlay, which may be by the same workshops, in Chinese Snuff Bottles from the Pamela R. Lessing Friedman Collection, no. 16. Other bottles which are similar in subject-matter, style of carving and in the use of a double overlay of moss-green and cinnabar-red, include an example illustrated by John Gilmore Ford, Chinese Snuff Bottles. The Edward Choate O'Dell Collection, no. 128; and another from the collection of Mrs. John Sheafe Douglas, illustrated in Chinese Snuff Bottles and Jade Carvings from the Douglas, Gnam and Other Collections, no. 20.

It is debateable whether this bottle really qualifies as a double overlay or whether the red is simply another colour swirled into the green overlay and used in the carving. Strictly speaking, a double overlay has two distinct layers superimposed on a separate ground colour, whereas the additional colour here is included in parts on the same plane as the first overlay. Regardless of what category it is placed in, this bottle is superb.

For an identical subject in lavender-blue glass, undoubtedly by the same hand, see A Treasury of Chinese Snuff Bottles, Vol. 5, no. 853.