A FAMILLE-ROSE PORCELAIN 'AMERICAN EAGLE' SNUFF BOTTLE QING DYNASTY, CIRCA 1874-1876

Hong Kong Auctioneers & Estate Agency, 15th January 1993, lot 344.
Hugh Moss (HK) Ltd., 1993.

Robert Kleiner, Chinese Snuff Bottles in the Collection of Mary and George Bloch, British Museum, London, 1995, cat. no. 222.
Chinese Snuff Bottles in the Collection of Mary and George Bloch, Israel Museum, Jerusalem, 1997.

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. 1413.

Gilding worn from the lip and in various places within the design. Small scratches and abrasions through use. One area of more considerable wear half way down one side. The occasional glaze bubble, not obtrusive.
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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."

Once American ships began trading at Guangzhou in the mid-Qing period, a range of porcelain wares was decorated with subjects suited to their market. Howard and  Ayers 1978, pp. 499–513, make a convincing case for this particular design having been made to commemorate the 1876 centenary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence in the U.S., suggesting a fairly specific date of production. If ordered for export, they would have been made long enough before the centenary to allow for shipping time and then discontinued; if the initiative came from the Chinese side, production could have begun later and ended less abruptly.

This bottle was probably enamelled at Guangzhou; it is decorated in a distinctive palette similar to other wares thought to have been decorated there. The colouring is typical of a late-Qianlong group of export wares made that favoured the predominance of an unlikely combination of brown, iron-red and pink.

The Chinese enamellers obviously had some trouble understanding the design they were given. The band at the shoulders seems based on an American floral scrolling stencil design but has been reduced to a series of incoherent squiggles and splashes of enamel.

Although larger vessels from this commemorative series are well known, the snuff bottles are extremely rare. Their rarity is partly obscured by a group of modern fakes made with a similar design in the 1970s. For one of the twentieth-century copies, see Sotheby’s Hong Kong, 28th April 1997, lot 54.