Page 87 - September 21 2021 Curtis collections snuff bottles Bonhams NYC

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A BLUE AND WHITE AND PALE UNDERGLAZE COPPER-RED The text page is a poetic ode to Su Dongpo’s journey and reads:
PORCELAIN ‘BOOK-FORM’ SNUFF BOTTLE
1800-1900 Five hundred years ago they continued their outing here,
Of cylindrical form modelled as a rolled book with numbered pages The water’s reflection according to the ancients joined with the floating
and opened to a scene of four figures in a canopied raft near bare- sky;
branched trees, depicting the the ‘Red-Cliff Visit’, with a descriptive Tonight the moon waivers behind eastern mountain,
poetic inscription on the facing page, the shoulder incised with a birds- Like that autumn of the renxu year [1082].
eye view of the page leaves, the deeply cut base mirroring the shape.
2 5/8in (6.6cm) high, stopper The same poem appears on a Yongzheng period tall blue and white
porcelain cup sold in our London rooms, 8 November 2012, lot 45.
$1,500 - 3,000
For an enameled example that depicts a single figure in a canopied
1800-1900年 青花詩文人物鼻煙壺 boat, rather than the group of scholarly figures, see Michael C.
Hughes, The Chester Beatty Library, Dublin, Chinese Snuff Bottles,
Baltimore, 2009, pp.300-301, no. 234.
This snuff bottle playfully takes the form of an open traditional string
bound book, with an illustration and a page of text visible. The picture
relates to Su Dongpo’s (1036-1101) famed journey to the Red Cliff,
which shared the name of a site of a crucial battle in the year 208,
during the Han dynasty. Su Dongpo chronicled his journey in two
poetic masterpieces, and his journey to the Red Cliff was recreated in
paintings and other media for centuries to follow.

THE EMILY BYRNE CURTIS COLLECTION OF CHINESE SNUFF BOTTLES | 85