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

Christie's London, 12th July 1971, lot 170.
Hugh M. Moss Ltd., 1971. 

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. 1692.

Two fronds of the plantian tree have missing tips. Otherwise the bottle is in very good 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."

This bottle fits into a broader group mostly of large snuff bottles with considerable depth of carving that generally leaves some elements of the design free standing and most in prominent relief. The carving is usually a virtuoso performance of busy scenes full of human figures at a number of playful pursuits in settings with quite a bit of architectural detail. Most of the bottles are accompanied by matching stoppers, most of which are probably the original ones. It may be that at least some of them were made in the south of China, at Guangzhou, Shanghai, or elsewhere, during the second half of the Qing dynasty for the collectors’ market. However, closer study of stylistic features suggests that the vast majority were made in Japan between 1854 and about 1920.

There are several clues that this particular bottle is Japanese, the first of which is the separate neck, fitted to the body after the hollowing had been achieved through an ample hole in the top, on some it is the foot or base area that is separate. Construction in sections was a standard Japanese method, greatly facilitating the hollowing process. The occasional Chinese snuff bottle has been found to be made in sections, although often not specifically to facilitate hollowing. Such examples, however, are very much the exception to the rule.

Other clues are found in certain of the details, such as the lotus finial on the stopper and the diaper-pattern grounds. Finials on Chinese snuff-bottle stoppers are usually no more than bead-like knobs, only occasionally decorated, and then discreetly. Japanese makers frequently made very fancy matching stoppers, and when finials were added, as they so often were, they tended to be far more elaborate. The opening lotus as a finial is typical of Japanese stoppers and unknown on any confirmed Chinese ones.

As for the diaper grounds, the Chinese used them meaningfully, to indicate different landscape elements: ground, water, and sky. On Japanese snuff bottles, the patterns are used more decoratively, losing the descriptive function they had still maintained in the Chinese lacquer carvings from which they were derived.

Here, for example, the artist has used a modified leiwen design for both the grassy ground and what is probably intended as sky. The diaper consists of a series of small, diagonally arranged concentric squares. On Chinese bottles, a similar design is sometimes used for paved areas of ground but never for the sky. The floral diaper, which usually indicates flat ground, is used here as the floor of the terrace that juts out of the house on one main side and for the seat of the couch bed on the other main side. On the couch bed, it could be interpreted as a rug design, however it is highly unorthodox for it to be of the same pattern as the terrace floor.

Another clue suggesting a Japanese origin is found in the gaming board, where the traditional globular boxes for weiqi pieces are set out on the board, but the board has a central band between the grids on either side, which Chinese weiqi boards do not. The carver here seems to have mixed up a game of weiqi with a game of xiangqi (Chinese chess).

The instrument the woman is playing on the other main side is also distinctly odd, broader and much shorter than the Chinese qin that one would expect to be played in this position on a table. It could be a se 瑟 or guzheng 古箏, two similar instruments that are sometimes shorter in proportion to their width, but one almost suspects the artist was working from a description of a European zither. In any case, when one considers that the player appears to be plucking with her left hand, it becomes clear that realism is not the primary goal here.

Finally, the drawing of the mark on this particular bottle seems to fit more comfortably with those of the Imperial Master (see lot 108 of this sale) than with known Chinese marks. Quite apart from the odd use of the variant zao in place of the more usual zhi (both meaning ‘made’), the writing of the characters has been adjusted to accommodate the black circular nerve canal at the centre of the tusk—highly unlikely on a Qing imperial product. A similar accommodation was made on Sale 3, lot 24.

Setting aside the iconographic deviations that suggest that the carver of this bottle was Japanese, not Chinese, he was clearly a master ivory carver and produced some of the most striking bottles of the overall group. A detailed discussion of related examples is available in the commentary to this bottle in Treasury 7.