AN IRON-RED PORCELAIN 'DOUBLE DRAGON' SNUFF POT SEAL MARK AND PERIOD OF DAOGUANG

A private New York collection.
Collection of Jana Volf.
Hugh Moss (HK) Ltd., 2000.

Hugh Moss, Victor Graham and Ka Bo Tsang, A Treasury of Chinese Snuff Bottles: The Mary and George Bloch Collection, vol. 6, Hong Kong, 2007, no. 1305.

With its broad, uncompressed form and extremely wide mouth, this is a typical snuff pot. The dating is not in doubt, given the reign mark. The presence of reign mark here confirms that the fashion of scenting snuff took hold at the court, however many more snuff pots may have been made for a wider market. It may be that the court was still setting fashion in certain areas of snuff taking in the Daoguang period, but it is also possible that, since this fad arose out of an increasingly arcane connoisseurship, the court was following fashion set by others at this time.

The design and drawing here are spirited. The dragons are a fine pair of fierce looking beasts, though the rear legs of one hint at the creeping corruption of earlier imperial dragon designs. A feature of later, devolved dragon design is that the rear legs get splayed out unrealistically, as if a Victorian butterfly collector managed to pin a dragon down onto his specimen board. Here they are still just about readable as realistic (in so far as a mythical beast can be realistic), but a hint of this proud beast becoming no more than an imperial pattern is evident.