Description
Description: Chinese snuff bottle of semi-translucid agate, of compressed round form. This is a bottle of extreme high quality. The smoothness and polishing are perfect, either inside and outside. The hollowing is extremely good, resulting in thin and uniform wall thickness even up to the shoulders, which make this bottle able to float in water, despite the small size (it is easier to achieve this feature on bigger bottles). The base is of rare, recessed, slot type, footless, with no signs of working tools due to the high grade of polishing. It feels very light in hand, and in fact it is weighing 60 grams while a quartz bottle of the same size and shape, well hollowed, is weighing 94 grams. By handling, it yields a very pleasant feeling. It is one of the finest bottles of our collection.
Mark: No marks
Foot/base: Slot type oval recessed base, with narrow beveled rim as a foot.
Dating: 18thCentury, Imperial workshop, either of Beijing or Suzhou
Material: Agate
Size: 52 mm high
Stopper: White jade stopper with bone spoon
Provenance: Antiquarian market
References: There are snuff bottles of this shape and quality, sold by the major auction houses, declared as being Imperial. However, due to the lack of the related pictures, it is not clear which of them is bearing the same type of base, which is very rare even among Imperial bottles. Most of them has just a slightly concave base. In our collection, we have another bottle with this type of base: see the 18th century, Palace workshop, sapphire blue glass bottle G3.
Notes: The light weight associated with the lack of the foot and the high grade of smoothness are making this bottle quite prone to slip from hands. It is a miracle that it is still immaculate after about two and a half centuries.
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