Lot Essay
The inscription is taken from a poem by Liu Han, a native of Changsha who was active during the twelfth century. The line quoted on this bottle is the last line in his poem, Zhong mei ('Planting Plum Trees').
See the pale green crystal bottle from the J & J collection, sold in our New York Rooms, 17 September 2008, lot 30 and Moss, Graham, Tsang, A Treasury of Chinese Snuff Bottles, Vol. 2, Quartz, no. 365, for very similar examples with an identical inscription.
The inscriptions on these bottles is in the same low relief style found on Zhiting's signed works, and suggests early-eighteenth-century production, with the design conceived as a flat, two-dimensional calligraphic image but raised to a higher plane than that of the ground, as opposed to a more sculptural relief inscription.
See the pale green crystal bottle from the J & J collection, sold in our New York Rooms, 17 September 2008, lot 30 and Moss, Graham, Tsang, A Treasury of Chinese Snuff Bottles, Vol. 2, Quartz, no. 365, for very similar examples with an identical inscription.
The inscriptions on these bottles is in the same low relief style found on Zhiting's signed works, and suggests early-eighteenth-century production, with the design conceived as a flat, two-dimensional calligraphic image but raised to a higher plane than that of the ground, as opposed to a more sculptural relief inscription.