1780-1900

Pictured on the Daoguang bottle, Zhong Kui is one of the most popular Chinese mythological figures. According to legend, he appeared to the Tang emperor Minghuang in a dream, promising to protect the emperor from the demons he had been tormenting him. To celebrate Zhong Kui's exorcizing of the demons, the emperor ordered the famous painter, Wu Daozi, to paint his dream, and ordered the image of the demon-queller to be reproduced and distributed all over the realm to ward off evil spirits. Zhong Kui is a popular deity invoked in the autumn, and a bottle of this design would be particularly appropriate at this time of year to keep evil spirits away.
For a discussion of miniature snuff bottles, and a related example with un undecipherable two-character mark, see Moss, Graham, Tsang, A Treasury of Chinese Snuff Bottles, The Mary and George Bloch Collection, Vol. 6, Part 2, Arts of the Fire, Hong Kong, 2008, pp. 565-9, nos. 1254 and 1255.