1770-1880

Details

A CARVED SILHOUETTE AGATE SNUFF BOTTLE
1770-1880
The bottle is of rounded, rectangular form and of a soft, pale-honey tone. It is subtly carved on one side using the darker markings with a pair of floating ducks, the female turning her head back toward the male with a leafy branch in her beak, with two small leaf-like inclusions above.
2 3/8 in. (6 cm.) high, jadeite stopper

Provenance

Hong Kong, prior to 1965.
Honor Smith Collection.
Hugh M. Moss Ltd., London, 1971.
Susan Lapidus (1948-2008) Collection, acquired 1969-2005.

Literature

H. Moss, Chinese Snuff Bottles of the Silica and Quartz Group, London, 1971, p. 37, no. 82.

Special notice

Items which contain rubies or jadeite originating in Burma (Myanmar) may not be imported into the U.S. As a convenience to our bidders, we have marked these lots with Y. Please be advised that a purchaser¹s inability to import any such item into the U.S. or any other country shall not constitute grounds for non-payment or cancellation of the sale. With respect to items that contain any other types of gemstones originating in Burma (e.g., sapphires), such items may be imported into the U.S., provided that the gemstones have been mounted or incorporated into jewellery outside of Burma and provided that the setting is not of a temporary nature (e.g., a string).

Sale room notice

Please note that a party [parties] with a financial interest will be bidding on this lot.

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Lot Essay

This bottle represents the silhouette style of agate carving. The style usually requires cutting through much of a thin plane of darker material to leave a shallow, silhouette design.

This bottle falls into a group of agate bottles where the variations in color in the stone provide all or part of the design, with or without surface editing. In a lecture before the 1996 International Chinese Snuff Bottle Society convention in Hong Kong, Hugh Moss proposed the term 'ink-play' to relate this concept in the snuff-bottle arts to principles of ink painting (reproduced Journal of the International Snuff Bottle Society, Autumn 1997, pp. 4-16). 'Ink-play' in the painting tradition refers to the interpretation of random markings made by the free expression of the artist's brush, ink, water and surface. With respect to hardstone carvings, this effect is achieved first by reading the markings as representational imagery, and second, by achieving a balance between the natural markings and subsequent enhancements by the artist. See H. Moss, V. Graham and K.B. Tsang, A Treasury of Chinese Snuff Bottles, Vol. 2, Quartz, no. 274 for a further discussion of this genre of snuff bottles.

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