Bottle ID: 276

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BANDED, IMPERIAL

Date: 1750-1800

Height: 52 mm

Agate, superbly hollowed, of small tapering cylindrical form with shoulders sloping to an everted mouth and with an indented circular foot, with a narrow white band encircling the honey colored body, the lower section of opaque caramel tones.

Imperial, attributed to the Palace Workshops, Beijing.

Similar Examples:

Crane Collection nos. 130 and 160
Crane Collection no. 113
Moss, Hugh, Victor Graham and Ka Bo Tsang. A Treasury of Chinese Snuff Bottles - The Mary and George Bloch Collection, 1998, Vol. 2, Part 2, pp. 452-453, no. 348 and pp. 478-479, no. 358.
Chistie's, New York, September 19, 2007, lot 625, The Meriem Collection.

Provenance:

Clare Lawrence Ltd.
Alexander Brody
Edith Griswold

Published:

Lawrence, Clare. The Alexander Brody Collection of Chinese Snuff Bottles, 1995, p. 23, no. 25

This is an example of a banded agate bottle, however its shape and the quality of hollowing raise it above more mundane examples. It can be given an imperial attribution based on similar bottles in both hard stone and jade. To hollow out a bottle until it is translucent as this one is, would tend to leave the stone weak in color and perhaps uneven. Yet the strength of this color is evident despite the thinness of its walls. There is no reason to adorn this bottle in any way; the carver is aware that he has created a masterpiece by using a superb piece of stone and hollowing it out until it cannot be hollowed further without damage. Its simple form is deceptive. In fact it is so correctly proportioned that even altering the concave foot or adding a foot rim would have destroyed the subtle balance of purity and form.

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