IMPERIAL, JINGDEZHEN KILNS, QIANLONG FOUR-CHARACTER SEAL MARK IN IRON RED AND OF THE PERIOD, 1780-1795

Molded porcelain snuff bottles were an innovation of the late Qianlong period and further developed and flourished in the Jiaqing period. The decorative motifs found on this group were drawn from mythology and popular contemporary novels. It is extremely rare to find a molded porcelain bottle with the subject of ‘The Eight Immortals,’ such as the present example, with a Qianlong mark; comparables from the same mold generally bear Jiaqing marks. It is likely, however, that this bottle was produced in the final years of Qianlong’s reign, prior to 1795, because of the proper orientation of the ‘S’ element in the Qian character of the mark. There is a group of porcelain snuff bottles with the ’S’ element reversed, which seems to have been a change that came about in the last years of the 18th century, after Qianlong had abdicated but was living in retirement. For a further discussion on the ‘S’ element and molded snuff bottles, see H. Moss, V. Graham, K.B. Tsang, A Treasury of Chinese Snuff Bottles: The Mary and George Bloch Collection, Hong Kong, 1995, Vol. 6, pp. 397-99 and pp. 474-82, nos. 1177 and 1212-1214.