清嘉慶 / 道光 傳揚州王素製涅白套褐料踏雪尋梅圖鼻煙壺

香港蘇富比1992年10月28日，編號363

Robert Kleiner，《Chinese Snuff Bottles in the Collection of Mary and George Bloch》，大英博物館，倫敦，1995年，編號180
《Chinese Snuff Bottles in the Collection of Mary and George Bloch》，以色列博物館，耶路撒冷，1997年

Hugh Moss、Victor Graham 及曾嘉寶，《A Treasury of Chinese Snuff Bottles: The Mary and George Bloch Collection》，卷5，香港，2002年，編號1046
Hugh Moss，〈Imperial Ivory Snuff Bottles〉，《國際中國鼻煙壺協會學術期刊》，2001年春，頁23，圖33

Crack running across the lip and then 16mm down the side. A smaller line running over the lip, an original flaw. Air bubbles visible, some burst to the surface.
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Among the names appearing with some regularity on Yangzhou overlay carvings is Wang Xiaomei 王小梅, an alternative name adopted by the prominent nineteenth-century literatus and painter Wang Su 王素 (1794 – 1877). On one documentary bottle in a Hong Kong collection, both names appear together: ‘Xiaomei, Wang Su’ (see JICSBS, Spring 2001, p. 23, fig. 26).

Wang, who seems to have lived his life in Yangzhou, was a professional painter who achieved a level of fame early in life and was probably able to commission snuff bottles with his name on them. The earliest dated Xiaomei-signed bottle was made in 1821 (JICSBS Spring 2011, p. 23, fig. 29), when he was in his late twenties and beginning to be known locally; he became more widely known and acknowledged as an artist only later in his career.

The Blochs acquired this bottle as an important (if stylistically anomalous) part of the Wang Su repertoire.

The couplet here reads

春山澹曉月，碧水漾往煙
Spring mountains buoy the dawn moon;
Green waters ripple the departing mist.