Bottle ID: 341

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WITH SAGE AND BOY

Date: 1750-1820

Height: 45 mm

Agate, superbly hollowed, of small flattened ovoid form with shoulders sloping to an everted mouth, the honey colored stone with golden and dark brown inclusions carved in relief with on one side a sage seated on a rock, attended by a young boy clutching a ruyi sceptre, beneath a wutong tree issuing from massive rocks, the reverse with a marble balustrade water-well from where auspicious vapors rise into the sky; with a seven character inscription in xingcao script reading: suo kan dong chi chu wu yun ('seated and watching clouds come out of a well').

Similar Examples:

Crane Collection nos. 70, 243 and 363
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. 536-537, no. 376.
Christie's, New York, March 21, 2002, lot 198, The Blanche B. Exstein Collection.

Provenance:

Clare Lawrence Ltd.
Sotheby's, New York, October 25, 1997, lot 118
Gerry P. Mack

Published:

Moss, Hugh M. [ed.] Chinese Snuff Bottles: 3, p. 21, figs. 5 and 8

This is a wonderfully evocative bottle from the Suzhou School, where the inscription tells the viewer exactly what the sage is doing under the wutong tree, dreamily sitting and watching the clouds come out of a well. The subject matter continues to the reverse of this very well hollowed bottle where the colors in the stone are used to great effect depicting the vaporous clouds as they rise into the sky. The wutong or parasol tree is a highly auspicious tree which was said to be the roost of the fenghuang or phoenix.In the Shijing, the famous Confucian classic, one poem reads: " A wutong tree grew on a mountain. A fenghuang bird perched at the top and sang towards the morning sun".

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