AN IVORY 'FIGURES IN A GARDEN' SNUFF BOTTLE IMPERIAL MASTER, JAPAN, LATE 19TH / EARLY 20TH CENTURY

Sotheby’s London, 7th June 1990, lot 384.

Hugh Moss, Victor Graham and Ka Bo Tsang, A Treasury of Chinese Snuff Bottles: The Mary and George Bloch Collection, vol. 7, Hong Kong, 2009, no. 1677.

In the Sotheby’s catalogue, it was described as being in imperial style and dated to the early nineteenth century. Although it was obviously related to what were then believed to be imperial ivory bottles, its lack of a reign mark and slight stylistic differences consigned it to a lesser position in the hierarchy.

Now that the true origins of the bottles with fake reign marks are known, those that are unmarked have risen to equal status. In fact, they come off looking a bit superior insofar as they do not explicitly claim to be an actual product of the tradition of the mid-Qing imperial moulded-porcelain bottles that inspired them. Their lack of fake reign marks allows one to judge them as a Japanese expression of a Chinese tradition; any hint of a Japanese flavour detected  may detect is therefore perfectly legitimate.

If one posits a scale with exact copies in ivory of Chinese porcelain bottles at one end and bottles carved entirely in Japanese style (perhaps even signed with Japanese names, as on Sale 2, lot 63 and Sale 7, lot 128 (both Katon茄燉); Sale 3, lot 131 (Kenkoku 兼谷); Sale 7, lot 43 (Kō-shin [or Kō-sei] 興清); and Sale 7, lot 71 (Mitsumasa 光正), at the other end, then a bottle such as this, which follows a moulded-porcelain design but varies the shape and leaves off the reign mark, is perhaps the first step from the pole of copying to the pole of creativity.

Despite the fact that this bottle does not pretend to be an imperial work, however, its original design can be found in extant moulded-porcelain bottles. One is in the Barron Collection, as yet unpublished, and another was in the Ko Collection (Hugh Moss Records). The servant beating cloth with two sticks is a favourite subject in Chinese painting, although rarely with the servant standing on the cloth at the same time. This process of beating newly woven cloth (silk, ramie, or other fibres) is intended to make the material softer. As a rule, if working with a large piece, one would fold it up to facilitate beating.

The usual cultural misunderstandings are present in this Japanese version of a Chinese subject, the most glaring of which is also the most amusing. On the original the oxherd is riding his charge across what appears to be a plank bridge, but this has been misinterpreted by the Japanese carver who looked at the two flights of steps in the garden scene and assumed that the bridge was a third flight. Water buffalo without circus training would be quite unable to negotiate steps in the normal way and they would not be shown strolling casually down a flight of them.

The shape has also been changed from the original, with a more bulbous form and a wider upper body, lending it the appearance of a fat meiping 梅瓶 (prunus-blossom vase).

Another unusual feature of this example is the painstaking hollowing. Many of the bottles carved from a solid piece of tusk (as opposed to being made in sections) are not particularly well hollowed. They were not intended for use, so there was little point in hollowing them as if they were. Although mostly adequately hollowed, they are often left with rather rough interiors that are not finished to the smooth, carefully crafted, albeit invisible, interiors of the better functional bottles. This one is not only well hollowed in the sense of being extensively hollowed; it is well hollowed in the sense of being unusually well smoothed inside for this group.