Page 68 - September 21 2021 Curtis collections snuff bottles Bonhams NYC

664
A DATED SILVER-INLAID BLACK-LACQUER LACQUER SNUFF The same poetic inscription, but lacking the inlaid seal, appears on
BOTTLE a silver wire inlay bottle published in Alexander Brody, Old Wine into
1891 New Bottles: A Collector’s Commonplace Book, Hong Kong 1993,
Of rounded rectangular shape, one main face inlaid with two archaic p.92, 156. The poem alludes to the Daoist concept that a gourd or
bronze vessels, a gu and a ding, with an inlaid date in seal script bottle (hu), contains an alternate world or miniaturized reality. Prior to
xinmao nianzhi, reversed by an eleven-character seal script inscription the introduction of tobacco to China, gourds would be used to hold
followed by an inlaid seal reading yi pian bing xin. medicinal herbs or elixirs of immortality, and they are often seen as an
2 5/8in (6.6cm) high, stopper accessory for an immortal or practitioner of the Way in the visual arts
of China.
$1,500 - 2,500
For a very similar bottle also inlaid with two archaic bronze vessels,
though of different forms to ours, but with the identical four-character
1891年 黑漆掐銀絲仿古鼻煙壺 dated inscription, see Denis S.K. Low, Chinese Snuff Bottles from the
Sanctum of Enlightened Respect III, Singapore, 2007, p. 349, no. 302.
The inlaid seal script inscription on the reverse of this bottle reads: The reverse side has a wire-inlaid inscription regarding snuff taking,
followed by two seals.
壺非壺 The bottle is not a bottle
煙非煙 and the snuff is not snuff,
壺中別有天 For within the bottle there is another cosmos.

Followed by an inlaid seal reading 一片冰心, literally ‘a piece of ice’ but
idiomatically read as ‘a strong and noble character’.

66 | BONHAMS