Page 74 - CHRISTIE'S Barron Collection Snuff Bottles 09/13/17

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A CARVED PINK TOURMALINE SNUFF BOTTLE
1860-1930
The deep pink, translucent gourd-form bottle is carved in high relief
with squirrels and a beetle amidst a gourd-bearing leafy vine.
1√ in. (4.7 cm.) high, glass stopper
$14,000-18,000

PROVENANCE

Hugh Moss (HK) Ltd., Hong Kong, 2000.
Pink tourmaline was a popular material in the eighteenth and
nineteenth centuries in China and was used for jewelry, decorative
carvings, snuf bottles and snuf bottle stoppers. While a great
percentage of extant tourmaline snuf bottles were long attributed
to the late Qing dynasty or Republic period, recent scholarship
has revealed that tourmaline bottles were also made during the
eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. See Moss, Graham,
Tsang, A Treasury of Chinese Snuf Bottles, The Mary and George
Bloch Collection, Vol. 3, Hong Kong, 1998, pp. 103-5, no. 407, for
a discussion of tourmaline bottles and the scholarship leading to
their re-attribution.
Compare to a bottle of similar form and color from The Ruth
and Carl Barron Collection of Fine Chinese Snuf Bottles: Part I,
Christie’s New York, 16 September 2015, lot 247.
1860-1930年 粉紅碧璽雕葫蘆萬代鼻煙壺

(another view)

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