Bottle ID: 143

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CARVED, SAMPAN

Date: 1750-1860

Height: 61 mm

Agate, very well hollowed, of bulbous rounded form with a neatly carved footrim, the pale honey colored stone with golden and dark brown inclusions carved in relief on one side with a scholar seated in a moored sampan playing a qin, with bamboo issuing from rockwork at one side, a wood-cutter with his basket of sticks seated on a rocky outcrop overlooking the sampan with lingzhi fungus and peaches growing at the side; the reverse with a monkey on a rock pulling a tethered horse out of the water.

Similar Examples:

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. 538-541, no. 377 and pp. 350-353, no. 310.
Moss, Hugh M. Chinese Snuff Bottles of the Silica or Quartz Group, 1971, p. 55, no. 141.
Sotheby's, Hong Kong, May 3, 1995, lot 460, The Alex S. Cussons Collection.

Provenance:

Clare Lawrence Ltd.
Joseph Baruch Silver
Clare Lawrence Ltd.
H. Schonfeld
Clare Lawrence Ltd.

Exhibited:

Honolulu Academy of Arts, Honolulu, Hawaii, November 23, 1989 - January 7, 1990

This bottle is fascinating when compared with similar examples from the Suzhou School. Although it is clearly not of this School, it must be from a related workshop and made during a similar time period. The artistic pictorial nature of the bottle, the manner in which the carver has used the stone and the darker inclusions all point to an accomplished carver at the height of his craft. Whilst agate bottles from the Suzhou School are not generally very well hollowed, this bottle is. Another unusual yet subtle feature is the natural "overlay" of the translucent brown stone over a darker inclusion to depict the wicker cover of the sampan - a touch of brilliance which is easy to miss at first glance. Whoever was the carver of this, and a very small group of similar bottles, he deserves his place amongst the higher echelons of Suzhou carvers.

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