AN INSCRIBED SONGHUA MELON-FORM SNUFF BOTTLE QING DYNASTY, 17TH / 18TH CENTURY, INSCRIBED BY ZHENZHI, 18TH / 19TH CENTURY

Collection of Bob C. Stevens.
Sotheby’s Honolulu, 7th November 1981, lot 183.
Belfort Collection, 1986.

Chinese Snuff Bottles and Dishes, Mikimoto Hall, Tokyo, 1978, cat. no. 267.
Très précieuses tabatières chinoises: Collection rassemblée par Maître Viviane Jutheau, L'Arcade Chaumet, Paris, 1982, p. 16, cat. no. 222.
Robert Kleiner, Chinese Snuff Bottles from the Collection of Mary and George Bloch, Sydney L. Moss Ltd., London, 1987, cat. no. 177.
Kleine Schätze aus China. Snuff bottles—Sammlung von Mary und George Bloch erstmals in Österreich, Creditanstalt, Vienna, 1993.
Robert Kleiner, Boda Yang, and Clarence F. Shangraw, Chinese Snuff Bottles: A Miniature Art from the Collection of George and Mary Bloch, Hong Kong Museum of Art, Hong Kong, 1994, cat. no. 249.
National Museum of Singapore, Singapore, 1994-1995.

Hugh Moss, ed., Chinese Snuff Bottles, no. 4, London, 1966, p. 39, fig. 6.
Bob C. Stevens, The Collector's Book of Snuff Bottles, New York, 1976, no. 660.
Gayle Gray Laverlochère, 'Book Review: Tabatières Chinoises', Arts of Asia, September-October 1982, p. 150.
Gayle Gray Laverlochère, 'Snuff Bottle Exhibition, Paris 1982', Snuff Bottle Review, March 1983, p. 11.
Journal of the International Chinese Snuff Bottle Society, Summer 1991, p. 6.
Hugh Moss, Victor Graham and Ka Bo Tsang, A Treasury of Chinese Snuff Bottles: The Mary and George Bloch Collection, vol. 3, Hong Kong, 1998, no. 397.

One tiny bruise on one main side, and two even smaller on one narrow edge, the lip with minute abrasion.
"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."

Wherever one finds a popular form produced in a number of different materials, as is the case with this snuff bottle, it is worth considering whether most or all of the examples might be an imperial group as a whole, coming in part at least from the palace workshops at Beijing. The stone may be the famous Songhua stone 松花石 prized by the Kangxi, Yongzheng, and Qianlong emperors for makinginkstones.

The inscriptions added to it, which could have been put on at any time subsequently but which are typical of nineteenth-century scholarly involvement in the snuff-bottle arts, relate apparently to three archaic bronze vessels, two ding sacrificial food vessels and a li (the li being like a ding but with hollow legs to expose the greatest possible surface to the flames when heating food). Using various scripts, including ancient bronze script, seal script, and regular script, a scholar identified only as Zhenzhi has copied for his respected ‘elder cousin’ the inscriptions from the ancient vessels.

In the centre of one main side, in large seal script, is the inscription Fu gui chang yi houwang富貴昌宜侯王 (‘Wealth, honour, and brilliance fitting for a lord’); this is an inscription seen on a great many washing pots from the Han dynasty.

The next two segments, to the left of that seal-script inscription, read Zhong zuo lü ju ding 仲作旅車鼎 (Zhong made a display ding). This is in archaic script. Lü and ju should be written as a single character; but the archaic form of lü it is so gangly and oversized that few scholars, if any, realized before modern times that it was not two characters. At the end of inscription is its name: Lü ju ding 旅車鼎 [revisit: 2152, 集成1921.]

In the next segment to the left is the dedication, in regular characters: Yuezhi biaoxiong zheng zi 悅之表兄正字 (‘For cousin Yuezhi to correct the characters’)

In the centre of the other main side is an inscription in archaic script covering three lobes of the melon: Shi shu fu zuo zun ding qi wan nian zizi sunsun yong bao yongheng 史叔父作尊鼎其萬年子子孫孫永寶用享 (Shi shu fu made an honoured ding; may his sons and grandsons treasure it, use it, and enjoy its benefits forwever’)[revisit]

To the left of that inscription, one of the lobes on the narrow side names the carver in regular script: Di Zhenzhi kan弟振之刊 (‘Carved by your junior, Zhenzhi’)

On the other narrow-side lobe, to the left of this signature, is a third inscription from a bronze vessel in archaic script: Wang zuo Yonggong qi li         王作永宮齊鬲 (‘The king commissioned a qi li for the Palace of Eternity’); it is followed by Yonggong li 永宮鬲 (‘The Yonggong li’) in regular script. The original inscription is available in a rubbing, showing that the bottle does not copy it closely.

The carver of these inscriptions may have been the son of a famous Anhui carver named Zhang Lifu 張立夫. Zhang excelled at carving ancient calligraphy onto stone. He also carved bamboo staffs and brushpots. His son Zhang Zhenzhi carried on his work and was much sought after as a teacher. Zhang Zhenzhi was on the staff of the eminent official and scholar Zeng Guofan 曾國藩(1811–1872).

Another Zhang Zhenzhi was a man whose given name was Heng 鑅; Zhenzhi was his courtesy name. His native place was in Zhili (Hebei province), close to the capital. He was an education commissioner in Hunan before 1850, and had a similar post in Fengtian 奉天 (modern Shenyang), where he remained from 1850 to at least 1854. Interestingly, Fengtian was only about 200 km west of the Changbai Mountain Range (on the border with North Korea), where shale like the material of this snuff bottle was extracted. (Information on Zhang Heng comes from Cheng Xiaojun 成晓军, Fengyu wan Qing: Zeng Guofan yu tade jingyingmen 风雨晚清 : 曾国藩与他的精英们 [The storm clears in the evening: Zeng Guofan and his finest men] [Beijing: Tuanjie chubanshe, 2009], p. 184; Wu Dating 吳大廷，Qing Wu Tongyun xiansheng Dating ziding nianpu 清吳桐雲先生大廷自訂年譜 [Autobiographical chronology by Mr Wu Tongyun, Dating] [Taipei: Taiwan Shangwu yinshuguan, 1980], p. 6; and http://blog.sina.com.cn/s/blog_60d1b38f0102dxjm.html)

In Treasury 3, it was also mentioned Wang Linsun 王麟孫, courtesy name Zhenzhi, whose landscape-painting style was nearly identical to that of his father, Wang Chen 王宸 (1720 – 1795). There was strong interest in epigraphy in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, and one assumes Wang Linsun was at least a decent calligrapher, but otherwise he is a weak candidate for the engraver of this bottle’s inscriptions in comparison with Zhang Heng and Zhang Zhenzhi. [revisit] Zhang Heng is particularly intriguing because this distinctive type of shale, Songhua stone 松花石, would have passed through Fengtian on its way to distribution in the rest of the country. However, a broad range has been left for the date of the carving. The early possible date for the bottle itself is based upon the fact that many of the darker range of Songhua inkstones in the imperial collection are dated to the Kangxi period.