A SPINACH-GREEN JADE SNUFF BOTTLE QING DYNASTY, 18TH / 19TH CENTURY

together with a spinach-green jade snuff dish

Hugh M. Moss Ltd., 1985.

Snuff Bottles of the Ch'ing Dynasty, Hong Kong Museum of Art, Hong Kong, 1978, cat. no. 176 (bottle).
Robert Kleiner, Chinese Snuff Bottles from the Collection of Mary and George Bloch, Sydney L. Moss Ltd, London, 1987, cat. no. 33.
Kleine Schätze aus China. Snuff bottles—Sammlung von Mary und George Bloch erstmals in Österreich, Creditanstalt, Vienna, 1993 (bottle).

Hugh Moss, Victor Graham and Ka Bo Tsang, A Treasury of Chinese Snuff Bottles: The Mary and George Bloch Collection, vol. 1, Hong Kong, 1996, nos. 153 (bottle) and 158 (dish).

Both the bottle and the dish are in overall excellent condition.
"In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective, qualified opinion. Prospective buyers should also refer to any Important Notices regarding this sale, which are printed in the Sale Catalogue.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF BUSINESS PRINTED IN THE SALE CATALOGUE."

The spinach-green material of this bottle is very similar to that of Sale 3, lot 7, which also bears the hall mark of Prince Ding. The stone is distinctive in its colouring, with very dark green, almost black flecking permeating it.

It was noted under Sale 6, lot 108 that similar dark-green nephrite from the Lake Baikal area of Russia was imported after the mid-nineteenth century, when Yaqub Beg (d. 1877; Agubo 阿古柏 in Chinese) replaced Qing rule in the Tarim Basin and the nephrite trade dwindled. However, the material is also known from Mughal art of the fifteenth century, so it must have been a longstanding trade item. This colour of nephrite occurs elsewhere in the world, as well.

In fact, this bottle is one of the two known snuff bottles in this distinctive stone that bear the hall mark of the fifth Prince Ding (定郡王, Zaiquan 載銓 1794 – 1854), who was already dead when Yaqub Beg established his regime. (The other is Sale 3, lot 7.) Therefore, this particular material clearly predates the loss of Qing control in Chinese Turkestan.

The material for both Xingyouheng tang snuff bottles can only have come from the same source, and, with the unusually bright flecking in an emerald-green colour which appears in both (although to a greater extent in the other bottle), they may even have come from the same boulder or piece of mined material. The colour of these paler flecks comes as close to emerald-green as it is possible to get in nephrite, and under magnification it is seen to be made up of tiny spots and striations of almost opaque bright green forming larger patches.

The two bottles are superbly made, of excellent formal integrity, and extremely well hollowed, but other than that they are of entirely different shapes, and their details differ considerably. This one has a neat, recessed foot with an evenly rounded foot rim; the other has no foot rim at all, just a simple, flat base. One has a flared neck, the other a straight-sided cylindrical neck. One has a relatively narrow mouth, the other a relatively wide one.

The obvious conclusion is that whatever the evolution of such details in hardstone snuff bottles, by the first half of the nineteenth century a wide range of possible details was used, even on bottles probably produced by a single workshop.

This bottle has been accompanied for some time by this matching dish, which is in the same material, also with the brighter green flecks, but without a mark. Even before Treasury 1, no. 158, the two had already been published as a set (Kleiner 1987, no. 33).