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Bottle ID: 279
BLACK, WITH INSCRIPTION
Date: 1804 or 1864
Height: 51 mm
Black lacquer on a wood base, of slender, flattened pear shape, with shoulders sloping to a cylindrical neck and with an oval footrim, incised on one side with a sprig of prunus blossom and a short inscription reading: "scattered shadows slant across and down"; the reverse with a poetic inscription reading:
"This one bough, places a springtime in your hand,
A happy portent, this the best of all the blossoms."
and dated "a spring day in the year jiazi"
and signed: "Xiaonai, carved by Geng Xichi" with two seals Da Ji (Great good fortune).
Similar Examples:
Lawrence, Clare. The Alexander Brody Collection of Chinese Snuff Bottles, 1995, p. 45, no. 66.
Moss, Hugh, Victor Graham and Ka Bo Tsang. A Treasury of Chinese Snuff Bottles - The Mary and George Bloch Collection, Vol. 7, Part 1, pp. 161-162, no. 1533.
Provenance:
Clare Lawrence Ltd.
Alexander Brody
Hugh Moss (HK) Ltd.
The first short inscription comes from a well-known poem praising plum blossoms entitled “Shanyuan Xiaomei”, Young Plums in a Mountain Garden, by the Song Dynasty poet, Lin Bu (967 – 1028). Lin Bu, also called Lin Hejing, was a famed recluse who lived on Gu Shan, or Solitary Hill, in the West Lake. Along with Ling Peak and West Creek, Gu Shan, an island, was considered one of the finest places to admire plum blossom during the Spring Festival. Lin Bu lived as a hermit painting and writing poetry, but his great loves were raising cranes and planting plum trees. As he never married, he was thought to have taken plum blossom as his wife and cranes as his sons.
The longer couplet on the reverse side of the bottle cannot be specifically identified, but seems to be a pastiche of well-known lyrics from the Song Period.
Geng Xichi is not a recorded name, and so little is known about him. The use of Xiaonai by his name would seem to indicate that it is his personal name, but this is also uncertain. The Bloch Collection example cited here is also signed Geng Xichi.