JINGDEZHEN KILNS, 1810-1860

The poem on this bottle, composed by the Qianlong Emperor in 1746, describes the merits of drinking his "three scents tea" (sanqingcha), which were of plum blossoms, finger citron and pine nuts. It appears on a range of Imperial porcelains, mostly teapots and tea-trays, but continued to be used on snuff bottles during the 19th century. A blue and white snuff bottle with this poem was in the Meriem Collection and sold in these rooms, 19 September 2007, lot 704, and another blue and white example is illustrated by J. Ford, Chinese Snuff Bottles. The Edward Choate O'Dell Collection, Baltimore, 1982, p. 67, no. 170. See, also, Moss, Graham, Tsang, A Treasury of Chinese Snuff Bottles, The Mary and George Bloch Collection, Vol. 6, Part 3, Arts of the Fire, Hong Kong, 2008, pp. 840-1, no. 1397, for an iron-red-enamel and underglaze-blue-decorated bottle, along with a full translation of the poem.