PAIRE DE TABATIÈRES IMPÉRIALES EN JADE BLANC ET BOUCHONS EN LAPIS-LAZULI
PAIRE DE TABATIÈRES IMPÉRIALES EN JADE BLANC ET BOUCHONS EN LAPIS-LAZULI
PAIRE DE TABATIÈRES IMPÉRIALES EN JADE BLANC ET BOUCHONS EN LAPIS-LAZULI
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PROPERTY FROM THE V.W.S. COLLECTION
PAIRE DE TABATIÈRES IMPÉRIALES EN JADE BLANC ET BOUCHONS EN LAPIS-LAZULI

CHINE, DYNASTIE QING, MARQUES À QUATRE CARACTÈRES INCISÉES ET ÉPOQUE QIANLONG (1736-1795)

Details
PAIRE DE TABATIÈRES IMPÉRIALES EN JADE BLANC ET BOUCHONS EN LAPIS-LAZULI
CHINE, DYNASTIE QING, MARQUES À QUATRE CARACTÈRES INCISÉES ET ÉPOQUE QIANLONG (1736-1795)
De forme balustre allongée terminée par un col évasé, elles sont munies d'un bouchon en lapis lazuli. La pierre est d'une belle couleur blanche uniforme.
Hauteur: 7,6 cm. (3 in.)
Provenance
Acquired by the father of V.W.S. (1890-1977) in China in the 1930s.
The V.W.S. (1918-1974) Collection.
Further details
A PAIR OF IMPERIAL WHITE JADE SNUFF-BOTTLES
CHINA, QING DYNASTY, QIANLONG INCISED FOUR-CHARACTER MARKS AND OF THE PERIOD (1736-1795)

Brought to you by

Camille de Foresta
Camille de Foresta Senior Specialist, Deputy Chairman of Christie's France

Lot Essay

Apart from fitting the bottle perfectly, the handsome lapis lazuli stopper is of a type that was produced at the Palace workshops during the Qianlong period and the fact that it is composed of two materials, a rather complex job for a simple stopper, is typical of the Palace workshops, where pieces might be sent from one shop to another to have bits added, special boxes made, lids carved, gilt-bronze details made, and so forth.

Although of an elongated ovoid form, this shape is also inspired, or at least makes reference to, the standard meiping ('prunus-blossom vase') so popular at the Qianlong Court. A virtually identical white jade meiping-form bottle with the same incised four-character mark is in the National Palace Museum, Taipei, and is illustrated in Snuff Bottles in the Collection of the National Palace Museum, Taipei, 1991, no. 125.

The type of mark on this present bottle appears on a series of highly Imperial jades from the Qianlong period, most likely from the latter part, although it may have been used earlier. Although unusual, and only found on Imperial wares of the Qianlong period, this type of clerical script mark is typical of Palace carvings (even if they were commissioned elsewhere, such as Suzhou, although the Court workshops remains the most likely origin). In the Imperial Collection still in Beijing there are pieces which have been in the collection since the eighteenth century which bear precisely this type of mark.

For a bottle of similar shape see Snuff Bottles in the Collection of the National Palace Museum, Taiwan, 1991, n°125, p. 151. An identical snuff bottle with lapis lazuli stopper was sold at Christie's Hong Kong, 25 April 2004, lot 838.

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