Page 127 - CHRISTIE'S Barron Collection Snuff Bottles 09/13/17

(two views)

•353 considerable portion of the known output. Slip is simply liquid clay
A SLIP-DECORATED AND ENAMELED STONEWARE which can be applied like a thick paint or used for gluing segments
SNUFF BOTTLE together.
YIXING, 1820-1850
The bottle is of fattened rectangular form, with a recessed panel It would appear that the Daoguang Emperor and his consort were
decorated in slip on each side, one depicting two dogs below fond of doves and small dogs, respectively, as subjects of paired
fowering plants, the other two pigeons below a bamboo plant and doves and Pekinese dogs became popular during this period.
a butterfy, all reserved on a dark blue-enameled ground, the base Paired doves, like other paired creatures, suggest conjugal bliss.
covered in white enamel. Paired doves and dogs appear often on porcelain wares of the
period, as can be seen on a Daoguang-marked enameled porcelain
2Ω in. (6.3 cm.) high, glass stopper bottle in the Palace Museum, Beijing, illustrated in Snuf Bottles-
The Complete Collection of Treasures of the Palace Museum, p. 227,
$6,000-8,000 no. 348.

PROVENANCE Other Yixing bottles of this design include two illustrated by B.
Stevens, The Collector’s Book of Snuf Bottles, New York, 1976,
Robert C. Eldred Co., East Dennis, Massachusetts, 28 August 1993. nos. 334 and 336, and one illustrated by R. Kleiner, Chinese
Ruth and Carl Barron Collection, Belmont, Massachusetts, no. 803. Snuf Bottles in the Collection of Mary and George Bloch, London,
1995, p. 369, no. 241. A Yixing bottle in this series, with enameled
EXHIBITED decoration, but decorated with landscape scenes set within a
blue-enameled surround, and impressed with a cyclical date, jiyu
Boston, International Chinese Snuf Bottle Society Convention, (1849), is illustrated in An Imperial Qing Tradition, Chinese Snuf
The Barron Collection, 23-26 September 2008. Bottles from the Collections of Humphrey K. F. Hui and Christopher
C. H. Sin, Hong Kong, 1994, no. 46.
Yixing in Jiangsu province gives its name to this distinctive 1820-1850年 宜興紫砂開光雙鴿雙犬圖鼻煙壺
stoneware. In production for nearly a thousand years in the same
place, Yixing ware only came into artistic prominence in the
later Ming dynasty, when it was adopted by the scholar class
as a suitable material for teapots and thence for other items for
the scholar’s studio. Slip-decorated snuf bottles constitute a

125