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Lot Essay
The five bats on each side of the bottle are an extremely fortuitous image, as they provide rebuses for both huge good fortune and for the Five Blessings of longevity, health, wealth, love of virtue and a peaceful death. The bats here are depicted in varying postures of flight, and it is significant that a few are shown upside down because in Chinese, an upside-down bat provides a homophone for 'happiness has arrived'.
Although the style of the lacquer here is typical of Fuzhou, it appears that it was adopted at Court and a range of similar wares made Imperially during the Qianlong period and the height of the Palace workshops. Compare with three lacquer snuff bottles from the Imperial Collection in Beijing, made in very similar style with gold lacquer decorative elements on a brown ground, the first with bats on a double-gourd form, the second with a leaping carp on a foliate-form bottle and the third in the shape of a double-fish, illustrated by Zhu Peichu and Xia Gengqi (eds.), Biyanhu Shihua, History of Snuff Bottles, pl. 52.
Although the style of the lacquer here is typical of Fuzhou, it appears that it was adopted at Court and a range of similar wares made Imperially during the Qianlong period and the height of the Palace workshops. Compare with three lacquer snuff bottles from the Imperial Collection in Beijing, made in very similar style with gold lacquer decorative elements on a brown ground, the first with bats on a double-gourd form, the second with a leaping carp on a foliate-form bottle and the third in the shape of a double-fish, illustrated by Zhu Peichu and Xia Gengqi (eds.), Biyanhu Shihua, History of Snuff Bottles, pl. 52.