Bottle ID: 640

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RED, BAT FORM

Date: 1750-1900

Height: 45 mm

Crystal, almost flawless, well hollowed, with inclusions of needle-like red and gold rutile, carved in the form of a plump bat, its wings folded, the mouth of the bat forming the mouth of the bottle.

Similar Examples:

Crane Collection no. 514
Snuff Bottles - The Complete Collection of Treasures of the Palace Museum, Vol. 47, Beijing, 2003, p. 155, no. 235.
Moss, Hugh, Victor Graham and Ka Bo Tsang. A Treasury of Chinese Snuff Bottles - The Mary and George Bloch Collection, 1995, Vol. 1, pp. 122-123, no. 48.
Christie's, New York, March 19, 2008, lot 89, The Meriem Collection, Part II.

Provenance:

Hugh Moss [HK] ltd.
Robert Kleiner, June 2005
John Ault

This is one of the finest of the known examples of an extremely rare group carved in the form of a bat. It is unusual in being a fatter, more compact bat than the usual type, although the form is extremely rare among animal bottles. It is also unusual because of the material. Rutile (providing coppery-red crystal) and actinolite (providing green needle-like crystals) are the two rarer hair-crystal materials used in snuff bottles, but here the needles not only vary from the usual copper-red to silver-gold color, but are unusually thin and dense in places, making for a fascinating pattern of inclusions.

 

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