.jpg?w=1)
Lot Essay
This bottle represents an important and intriguing development from the mid-Qing period onwards in which scholars, using the "iron-brush" of the seal-carver, decorated their own snuff bottles if they were in suitably soft materials (or even in harder ones if they were skilled with lapidary tools). Appreciated by the cultured elite largely for its naturalness, the coconut shell used in the making of the bottles was imported from the tropical areas of south China, in particular the island of Hainan.
The well-known "icy heart" metaphor is an idiomatic expression signifying a person who nurtures a pure heart. Such a person does not care about material wealth and prefers to lead a tranquil life. The source of this term is the last line in a seven-syllable poem entitled Seeing off Xin Jian on the Hibiscus Tower by Wang Changling, an eighth-century (Tang dynasty) poet. The poem reads:
The spring rain gutted the river as dusk fell in the region of Wu.
When it clears up at dawn I will see you off to the isolated mountains of Chu
If friends and relatives in Luoyang ask me,
[Tell them] my heart is like a piece of ice kept in a jade vase.
The well-known "icy heart" metaphor is an idiomatic expression signifying a person who nurtures a pure heart. Such a person does not care about material wealth and prefers to lead a tranquil life. The source of this term is the last line in a seven-syllable poem entitled Seeing off Xin Jian on the Hibiscus Tower by Wang Changling, an eighth-century (Tang dynasty) poet. The poem reads:
The spring rain gutted the river as dusk fell in the region of Wu.
When it clears up at dawn I will see you off to the isolated mountains of Chu
If friends and relatives in Luoyang ask me,
[Tell them] my heart is like a piece of ice kept in a jade vase.