Page 54 - Carl Barron Snuff Bottle Collection, CHRISTIE's Spet 12 2018

•662
A GUYUE XUAN ENAMELED GLASS SNUFF BOTTLE
IMPERIAL, PALACE WORKSHOPS, BEIJING, 1767-1780
One side is decorated with three boys, one lifting a small net to reveal a cricket, and the
reverse is decorated with a cockerel standing on a blue rock amidst cockscomb, peony and
grasses. The narrow sides are decorated with a bat suspending a beaded chain hung with
a chime, cash, an axe head and a tassel. The base has a Guyue xuan mark in pale red enamel
in regular script.
2¡ in. (6 cm.) high, metal stopper
$8,000-10,000
PROVENANCE
Baroness Jacobea Sapuppo, Italy.
Vanessa F. Holden Collection, New York, 2001.
Ruth and Carl Barron Collection, Belmont, Massachusetts, no. 3095.
EXHIBITED
Boston, International Chinese Snuf Bottle Society Convention,
The Barron Collection, 23-26 September 2008.
Keeping crickets and staging cricket fghts were popular autumn pastimes for men and
boys in China. The custom is said to have been frst popular in the Tang dynasty. In this
charming and nostalgic scene, boys bring their clay cricket pots together for a match,
holding their insects back with thin bamboo sticks until the signal to release them.
The bottle once resided in the collection of Baroness Figlia d’Essen which mostly
consisted of fne Chinese snuf bottles, and was formed in the late nineteenth century
and early years of the twentieth century and then passed down to her daughter, Baroness
Jacobea Sapuppo. The latter was the wife of the former Italian Ambassador to Bulgaria
and Peru. A number of pieces of Chinese glass from the collection were sold at Christie’s
Milan, 11 May 2000 while the collection of snuf bottles was sold at Sotheby’s London,
14 November 2000.
1767-1780年 御製玻璃胎畫琺瑯鬥蟋蟀圖鼻煙壺 紅彩楷書「古月軒」款

(mark)

52