A DENDRITIC AGATE SNUFF BOTTLE QING DYNASTY, 18TH / 19TH CENTURY

Zhirou Zhai Collection, Hong Kong.
Hugh M. Moss Ltd., 1993.

Hugh Moss, Victor Graham and Ka Bo Tsang, A Treasury of Chinese Snuff Bottles: The Mary and George Bloch Collection, vol. 2, Hong Kong, 1998, no. 199.

The overall condition is excellent.
"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 is one of the materials that appear to have been barely, if ever, used in China before the evolution of the snuff bottle in the mid- to late-seventeenth century. It is uncertain whether this is because it was simply not available or because until the snuff bottle came along, with its massive concurrent demand for intriguing materials and vastly increased production of small, hand-held works of art, too little demand existed to make it sufficiently valuable to mine in any quantity.

The material here is very unusual for the snuff-bottle world in being a combination of an evocative pattern of the common green material with an area of a much rarer, unusually even and richly-coloured mahogany-red. The artist has also used the material cleverly to divide one main face into two distinct areas vertically while leaving the neck green.

The formal integrity here is excellent, the hollowing extremely painstaking, leaving thin and even walls (standard for a wide range of better-quality chalcedony and crystal bottles) and the detailing of mouth, neck, and foot good, although the foot has the slightly lazier, recessed convex foot that may indicate that it is from the period of general decline, perhaps from the early nineteenth century.

The surface polish on chalcedony bottles tends to be consistently faultless, even on bottles of lesser quality as art. Chalcedony, with its hardness of 7 on the Mohs scale, obviously took as standard a high and very even sheen when polished, and nothing less seems to have been considered acceptable. The hardness of the material also seems to have ensured that this sheen remains, in most cases, much as it probably was on the day it was made.