Description
Description: Chinese greenish nephrite jar snuff bottle. It has an uncommon jar shape with wide opening.
The last picture is showing the inside of the bottle, where we can see a circular groove at the bottom. Note that the width of the groove is not uniform.
This means that the bottle was hollowed by first removing a big core by means of a tubular drill. These tubular drills were made by a soft material, usually bamboo or a rolled sheet of copper, aided by a grinding powder of crushed hard stones. The same technique was used by the Egyptians for hollowing the canopic jars. Once the core was removed by crashing it after the circular drilling, the same tool was used for widening, as possible, the hollowing of the bottle. The tracks of these further steps can be seen in the lower part of the same picture. The tool is surely the same because those tracks have the same diameter of the circle at the bottom.
Because the diameter of the circle at the bottom is about 7mm, and the width of the mouth is 9.2 – 9.8 mm (it is not perfectly circular), the carver had a limited space for angling the tool, and in fact the hollowing is not wide at the shoulders as it is at the bottom of the bottle.
All the above is pointing toward an early dating for this bottle.
Mark: No marks
Foot/base: Deep concave base, flat foot.
Dating: Early 18thCentury, probably Kangxi period
Material: Nephrite jade
Size: 49 mm high
Stopper: Green jade stopper with stained ivory spoon
Provenance: Antiquarian market
References:
Notes:
Reviews
There are no reviews yet.