A CYLINDRICAL YELLOW JADE SNUFF BOTTLE QING DYNASTY, QIANLONG / JIAQING PERIOD

Robert Hall, London, 1985.
Sotheby's New York, 12th October 1993, lot 204.

Robert Kleiner, Chinese Snuff Bottles in the Collection of Mary and George Bloch, British Museum, London, 1995, cat. no. 49.
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. 1, Hong Kong, 1996, no. 77.

The inner mouthrim appears to have been slightly polished. There are also a couple of nibbles to the rims, but the overall condition is otherwise very good. The actual colour is slightly richer than the catalogue illustration.
"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."

This bottle is undoubtedly of an early date, and it may even be from the palace workshops at Beijing, to judge by the colour, so popular at the Qianlong court, the tiny mouth, the unusual shape, and the general resemblance to other bottles of similar taste, size, and feeling that are attributable to the palace (see Sale 7, lot 36 and Christie’s, Hong Kong, 1 November 1994, lot 1240, for instance).

What is extraordinary about the bottle, apart from its shape, is the fact that the deeply recessed foot is a separate piece of the same material, so well matched and fitted that it had not previously been noticed as such.

The advantage of using a separate foot is obvious: instead of hollowing the bottle through the mouth (which is unusually small in this case), the lapidary could work through a wide opening in the base. A benefit of doing so is that relatively large pieces could be removed from the interior for use as smaller carvings or for beads. Indeed, it is possible that this bottle was itself originally the core from a larger bottle; although no such bottle is recorded, the larger vessel could have been another type of object with a cylindrical interior. This practice was later adopted in Japan, where it was used in the production of ivory copies of imperial Qianlong bottles (see Moss, Graham, and Tsang 1993, p. 481).

The only other possible reason for using a separate piece of material for the foot would be to repair a mistake in manufacture. If the carver had accidentally pierced the deeply recessed foot while hollowing the interior, the bottle could then have been salvaged by carving away the entire foot and inserting a separate section deep inside the foot rim.  A separately added foot, however, occurs elsewhere in imperial production, not only with jade wares, but with glass from the palace workshops as well.

(One way to avoid piercing the bottom of the bottle would be to retain a thick base, which also lowers the centre of gravity for the bottle, making it less likely to be toppled when on display in the palace. See Sale 8, lot 1109. Perhaps a bottle such as the present one was a precursor to thick-based bottles.)

Whatever the reason, the fitting of the separate foot is a miracle of craftsmanship. Nephrite, with its translucency and subtlety of colours, is practically impossible to match up in a different section. Thus, an original matching stopper in identical material often appears to be of a different colour in place simply because of the light refraction caused by the gap between the two pieces. Here this has been entirely disguised, and it was only on close examination under a ten-power lens that the join was revealed. Without magnification, it is invisible.