Page 42 - The Ruth and Carl Barron Collection of Fine Chinese Snuff Bottles: Part I

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AN UNUSUAL TWO-TONED PINK TOURMALINE SNUFF BOTTLE
1880-1950

The fattened bottle is well carved in high relief through a clear area of the deep pink stone on
one side with a lady seated on a pierced rock beneath the arching leaves of a banana plant, and
the reverse is carved with a scholar holding a book, also shown seated on a rock beneath a pine
tree. Peony carved on one narrow side and bamboo on the other grow from rocks carved on
the base. The pink tourmaline stopper is carved with a bird fanked by fowers.
2º in. (5.7 cm.) high, original pink tourmaline stopper

$8,000-10,000

PROVENANCE:

The Ko Collection.
Ruth and Carl Barron Collection, Belmont, Massachusetts, no. 2606.

Pink tourmaline was a popular material in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in China and was
used for jewelry, decorative carvings, snuff bottles and snuff bottle stoppers. While a great percentage
of extant tourmaline snuff 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 Snuff 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.

The present bottle is an unusual example from the later group. The heavy stone was thoughtfully used
by the carver, who used the unusual outer, crystal-like layer on one side to create the deeply-carved
scene of the lady beneath a banana plant. The carving on the opposite side, in lower relief, can be
compared to a bottle in the collection of Ann and John Hamilton, sold at Sotheby’s New York, 27
Mary 2003, lot 385. The Hamilton bottle depicts boys at play in a rocky and is of a similar shape and
size to the present example.

1880-1950年 粉紅碧璽巧雕芭蕉仕女圖鼻煙壺

(additional views)

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