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Lot Essay
For a related feline-form bottle, tentatively identified as a tiger, carved from similar pebble material and with its tail set along its backbone, see Moss, Graham, Tsang, A Treasury of Chinese Snuff Bottles, Vol. 1, Jade, no. 47, along with another tiger-form bottle in white jade, no. 46, and a mythical beast also in pebble nephrite, no. 50.
As the practice of taking snuff became an obsession at the Court during the late-seventeenth century, the wide range of Chinese arts was quickly pressed into service to supply the new demand for snuff containers. From the 1680s onwards, a growing number of Palace workshops produced a variety of wares, including jade and other hardstone carvings, and it could not have been long before these were employed in the production of snuff bottles. Although glass and enamels from the Palace workshops are more widely visible today, while hardstone carvings are extremely difficult to identify as Palace products prior to the Qianlong period, we can assume that snuff bottles were produced in a wide range of materials at the Court. Equally, production elsewhere, particularly in the north of China, would have begun at the same time to supply a private demand. Animal forms carved out of pebble material were popular centuries before snuff was introduced, and among the earlier production of snuff bottles would have been similar carvings.
As the practice of taking snuff became an obsession at the Court during the late-seventeenth century, the wide range of Chinese arts was quickly pressed into service to supply the new demand for snuff containers. From the 1680s onwards, a growing number of Palace workshops produced a variety of wares, including jade and other hardstone carvings, and it could not have been long before these were employed in the production of snuff bottles. Although glass and enamels from the Palace workshops are more widely visible today, while hardstone carvings are extremely difficult to identify as Palace products prior to the Qianlong period, we can assume that snuff bottles were produced in a wide range of materials at the Court. Equally, production elsewhere, particularly in the north of China, would have begun at the same time to supply a private demand. Animal forms carved out of pebble material were popular centuries before snuff was introduced, and among the earlier production of snuff bottles would have been similar carvings.