清十八 / 十九世紀 玉光素鼻煙壺

Hugh M. Moss Ltd，香港，1993年

Hugh Moss、Victor Graham 及曾嘉寶，《A Treasury of Chinese Snuff Bottles: The Mary and George Bloch Collection》，卷1，香港，1996年，編號164

Natural flawline in outer lip. 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."

The lovely soft beige colour of this piece of material is rather unusual for nephrite.

From one angle there appear to be two areas where colour from the surface of a pebble may have penetrated deeply into the core leaving darker brown lines, one of which is quite long. These are invisible from another angle, which reveals only a slight variation in the beige colouring within the stone. This produces the very subtle effect of a rainbow-shaped curve in a paler colour in the upper portion of the body.

When the bottle is turned in the hand, these paler markings exactly link up with the longer brown lines and the arc is inverted, so that the overall effect is of a wave-like line around the upper half of the body. There was certainly no intent on the part of the artist for these lines to be read pictorially. They are pointed out mainly to draw attention to the importance in aesthetics of considering every possible nuance of meaning, however subtle it may appear.

Apart from the material, the main appeal of this bottle lies in the subtlety of form and in the rarity of the cylindrical form in snuff bottles other than porcelain. The workmanship here is not complex; there is no fancy relief carving and no virtuoso hollowing. Instead, the artist has chosen to make a simple statement say a lot.

The hollowing is very well done, following the outer contour up into the shoulders and around the body, but leaving a fairly heavy foot (0.52 cm). This feature was clearly a matter of choice rather than a question of saving time or effort, as the detailing is superb, with a perfectly circular interior base and a neat right-angled wall rising up from it. This cannot have been an easy task through so small a mouth and with the restrictions of a long, only slightly flaring inner cylinder to the neck. It speaks volumes for the commitment of the artist that he would go to so much trouble on a feature invisible to the user, particularly if the bottle were full of snuff.

The formal integrity is also perfect, with the unusual circular concavity of the foot, the neat foot rim, and the detailing of neck and lip, all superbly carved. It is the subtlety of the shaping, however, that transforms a perfectly executed bottle into a serious sculptural statement. The cylinder tapers upwards toward the neck before curving inward at the shoulders; the difference in diameter between the lower and upper ends of the cylinder is only 1.3 mm, but the visual effect is considerable, giving a far greater impression of sturdiness than would have been achieved with a straight-sided cylinder.

The final touch of genius is found in the even slighter flaring of the neck to offset the taper of the body, which is a tiny difference (less than 0.5 mm) but again visually powerful.

There are few clues as to origin and dating. The heavy base might indicate a palace workshop source, as might the use of flawed material. The cylindrical form is another possible clue to such an attribution. There is an inscribed cylindrical chalcedony bottle from the collection of Yongxing 永瑆 (1752 – 1823; Kleiner 1987, no. 142), which, although smaller in size, is of very similar form, even though the slightly flaring neck terminates with an upper neck rim. The neck rim is a typical palace feature on hardstone snuff bottles, and it is likely that Yongxing, the eleventh son of the Qianlong emperor, had ready access to the palace workshops.

If the two are connected formally, a date from the late-Qianlong into the early-Daoguang period would be the most likely, although a broader possible dating range has been left. This would also tie in with the large number of cylindrical porcelain snuff bottles that seem to have been made from the end of the Qianlong period onwards. Many of these with blue-and-white-dragons and unglazed bases incised with concentric circles are obviously imperial in nature.