AGATE SNUFF BOTTLE
18TH-19TH CENTURY
5.5 cm high (without stopper)
The pebble-form bottle is well hollowed and carved in relief with peanuts rendered from the caramel-brown areas in the stone. Two blossoms, also picked out in caramel-brown, form the foot. The translucent stone is of rich amber colour and incised around the exterior with fine vertical lines. The carnelian stopper is shaped as a stalk.
Snuff bottles of this type are shaped after a particular fruit, jujube. The combination of peanuts huasheng, and jujube zaozi, represent the wish 'may you soon give birth to a distinguished son' zaosheng guizi.
A very similar bottle from the collection of the Palace Museum, Beijing, is illustrated in Snuff Bottles - The Complete Collection of the Palace Museum, Hong Kong, 2003, pl.255. Another example is published by B. Stevens, in The Collector's Book of Snuff Bottles, New York, 1976, pl.479.
Provenance:
Formerly in the collection of Gerda Reys, The Netherlands
acquired in the 1980s