Page 42 - Carl Barron Snuff Bottle Collection, CHRISTIE's Spet 12 2018

•646
A CARVED GREEN AND RUSSET JADE SNUFF BOTTLE
MASTER OF THE ROCKS SCHOOL, 1740-1850
The olive-green jade bottle is carved in relief on one side utilizing the russet-brown skin to
depict a large sun rising above crashing waves in front of a clif face with lingzhi growing at
the side. The reverse is carved with lingzhi at the base below a bat in fight, both picked-out
in the russet skin.
2æ in. (6.9 cm.) high
$10,000-15,000
PROVENANCE
Robert Hall, London, 1979.
The Guo’an Collection, no. 306.
Sotheby’s Hong Kong, 30 October, 2000, lot 617.
Hugh Moss (HK) Ltd., Hong Kong, 2001.
Ruth and Carl Barron Collection, Belmont, Massachusetts, no. 3153.
EXHIBITED
Boston, International Chinese Snuf Bottle Society Convention,
The Barron Collection, 23-26 September 2008.
The Master of the Rocks School seems to have specialized in carvings from this
distinctive material. The School’s main output was bottles carved with landscape designs,
but many other subjects are recorded, including a few with chi dragon designs, which may
have been partly produced for the Court. The quality of carving and the use of material of
the present bottle are typical of this School.
A comparable example of the same size and similar use of a large area of dark skin from
the Ruth and Carl Barron Collection of Fine Chinese Snuf Bottles: Part I, was sold at
Christie’s New York, 16 September 2015, lot 204, and another from the Blanche B. Exstein
Collection was sold at Christie’s New York, 21 March 2002, lot 158. For other examples of
snuf bottles from the Master of the Rocks School, see Moss, Graham, Tsang, A Treasury
of Chinese Snuf Bottles: The Mary and George Bloch Collection, Vol. 1, Hong Kong, 1995,
pp. 350-69, nos. 136-41.
1740-1850年 青玉雕靈芝圖鼻煙壺

40