Page 126 - Marchant Ninety Jades For 90 Years

六 67. Imperial shou-character snuff bottle of octagonal tapered form, incised on each facet with shou, ‘longevity’, characters, in columns

十 of eight totalling 128 characters, the tall cylindrical neck, shoulder and foot plain with slightly concave mouth, the interior well

七 hollowed, the stone of even white tone.

2 ¼ inches, 5.7 cm high without stopper.
百 Qianlong, 1736-1795.
壽

字 • From an important Middle Eastern collection.
八 • Purchased in Hong Kong from Mr Liang in the 1950s.
方 • Facetted and tapered snuff bottles are typical of the imperial workshops, in particular the glassworks. A clear-glass example
鼻
煙 of similar form, previously sold by Robert Hall and Robert Kleiner, is illustrated by Robert Kleiner in The Nordic Butterfly
壺 Collection of Chinese Snuff Bottles, Part I, no. 8, p. 17, where the author also illustrates a related red glass facetted tapered example

bearing a Qianlong four-character mark, no. 7, p. 16, previously purchased in Shanghai in 1914 and sold by Marchant; a further

白 opaque green-glass example, sold by Robert Hall in 1979, is illustrated by Hugh Moss, Victor Graham and Ka Bo Tsang in The
玉 Art of the Chinese Snuff Bottle, The J & J Collection, Volume II, no. 333, p. 560, where the authors also note that an ‘early date is
likely’.

乾 • Shou-character snuff bottles are well known. Two in the Qing Court collection are

隆 illustrated by Li Juifang in Snuff Bottles, The Complete Collection of Treasures of The

Palace Museum, Beijing, Volume 47, nos. 228 & 229, pp. 151/2; another is illustrated

by Xue Gui Sheng in Zhong Guo Yu Qi Shang Jian, ‘Appreciation and Examination of

Chinese Jades’, no. 594, p. 305; a further example was included by Marchant in their

80th anniversary exhibition of Chinese Jades from Han to Qing, 2005, no. 96, p. 111.

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