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A JADE SNUFF BOTTLE, QIANLONG 1750-1800. Possibly Imperial. The stone of pale celadon color. Carved as an eggplant with leaves, vines, a smaller eggplant and two majestic butterflies, all in high relief and with fine incision work. Provenance: A British private collection. Condition: Perfect.
Stopper: Carved green jade branch. Weight: 82.2 grams excluding stopper. Dimensions: Height not including stopper 63 mm. Diameter of mouth 4 mm. A series of fruit-, flower-, and vegetable-form snuff bottles, mostly of white or greenish-white nephrite and sometimes with areas of brown skin, form a large and well-known group. A left-over prejudice from the days when snuff bottles were judged to a large extent by their appeal standing in a cabinet has left them generally somewhat unpopular, along with other bottles that will not stand unsupported. These are irrational prejudices, since snuff bottles were made to be viewed primarily in the hand, in use rather than standing on a flat surface, and certainly not behind glass in a cabinet. Many of the most intriguing bottles are those that only come to life in the hand, and any functional snuff bottle is better viewed this way.
Two features support the possibility of an imperial-workshop origin for this bottle. The nephrite here, despite its lovely color, is not flawless. It has distinctive chalky-white inclusions in the greener white material that is found on other pieces more firmly attributed to the palace workshops. The painstaking hollowing (achieved through a tiny mouth for a normalsized bottle) also leaves a relatively thick lower section, not as thick as on some, but sufficient, particularly in relation to the superb hollowing of the upper area, to suggest a deliberate preference for a heavy base, which has been have established as a likely characteristic of the palace workshops. The likely period for this bottle is from the second half of the Qianlong reign. The massive supplies of nephrite that flooded into the court after the military occupation of Turkestan in 1759 resulted in an increase in the number of workshops producing for the court and almost certainly prompted renewed imperial interest, keeping the standards of workmanship and artistry at a peak well into the early nineteenth century. The present bottle stuns even the seasoned collector by the sheer quality of carving and the fluency of depiction. Other pieces may be as good, but nothing that this author has ever seen is better controlled technically or more lifelike in its detail. The subject comes in a miraculously realistic way that is rarely achieved in lapidary work.
乾隆青白玉鼻烟壺 1750-1800。可能御製。青白色，茄子形，浮雕葉子、籐枝、小茄子以及兩隻蝴 蝶。雕刻細膩生動活潑。 來源：英國私人收藏. 品相：完美 瓶蓋：碧玉雕樹枝形 重量：82.2 克不含蓋 尺寸：高不含蓋 63 毫米；嘴直徑4 毫米
Estimate EUR 1.000,Starting price EUR 500,-
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