The Chinese Snuff-Bottle.
THE Chinese snuff-bottle corresponds to the European snuff-box, and flourished at about
the same period. The Chinese used a bottle with a stopper to which a small spoon was
attached; with this the snuff was extracted. As the pocket was unknown in China, this
method of carrying the fragrant powder had obvious advantages. A box is kept
automatically shut in a pocket; in the capacious Chinese sleeve it might easily fall
open. The bottle, with its narrow stoppered mouth, is a safer container. European snuff-
boxes, in porcelain, gold, crystal or tortoiseshell, are often technical triumphs, but
their fine detail does not lend itself to colour reproduction. The Chinese, with their
passion for flowers, seem to have concentrated on colour-effect in making small
objects. Collecting Chinese snuff-bottles is like making an indoor flower garden, in
miniature; nor is it a very much more costly hobby than growing flowers. If one is
content to do without the more obviously precious materials one can make a charming
group of these little objects at an average price of two or three pounds each, and I
have myself bought choice specimens for a pound or less. Glass and porcelain bottles are
still relatively cheap and can be bought even from London dealers, most of whose stock
is far beyond the reach of many people; and they can still be found in antique shops in
country towns from which many small pretty things, such as Battersea enamels, coloured
glass paper-weights or small china animals, have long disappeared. But one thing is
quite certain: the present supply will have to last us indefinitely, for the hope of
new arrivals from the East, which were once of weekly occurrence, is now reduced by
world events to nothing. For instance, the pretty bottles made of glass and painted
inside will never be produced again,
1 to 4. Ivory snuff-bottles, finely undercut and tinted in
various colours. 5. Amethyst: a rare specimen. 6. Enamelled porcelain in relief, Ch’ien-
lung period (A.D. 1736-1796). The delicately seeded green ground is here seen at its
best. 7. Rock crystal: a graceful bottle well hollowed out. Some bottles are hardly
bottles at all, but mere blocks into which a hole has been bored. All the examples
illustrated in this article are from the collection of Sir Noel Arkell and are about
two-thirds actual size.
8. A fine example of shape adapted to material. The angular form
exactly suits the marking of the agate. 9. A bold piece of interior painting: an
unusually large bottle. 10. Mutton-fat jade with a poem engraved on one side. Coral
stopper set in ormolu. Ch’ien-lung period. 11. A lovely piece of agate carved in
delicate low relief. 12. Porcelain: one of the grasshopper bottles, delicately enamelled
and perhaps all the work of one artist. Some are dated, and the type seems to be about a
hundred years old, or a little more. 13. One of the choicest ivory bottles in the
collection. Other examples of this style are known, but it was a speciality of snuff-
bottle makers and does not appear in other forms. Inlaid with red and black lacquer.
Ch’ien-lung period Porcelain in high relief with enamelled details.
This style began as early as K’ang-hsi, but the enamels here used are of the famille-
rose variety, which succeeded the typical famille-verte style of the K’ang-hsi period
(1662-1722). 15. Compare No. 13. 16. Ivory: perhaps adapted from a form used originally
for seals; a very rare type of ivory bottle, reminiscent of a Japanese netsuke.
17. Porcelain with decoration in blue and underglaze copper-red, a technique unknown in
Europe, where the underglaze red colour has never been successfully used. The subject is
The Eight Horses ofMu Wang. 18. An especially good example of the cameo glass in two
layers; the top one is red on a transparent basis. The relief-work is beautifully
rounded. 19. Porcelain decorated in overglaze red (iron-red) and gold. The colour is
here exquisitely shaded. This effect was never attained in the earlier versions of the
Red Dragon design, the first known examples of which (only two specimens have so far
been seen) date back to the Hsuan-te period (A.D. 1426-1435). In a fine bowl of this
early version the dragon, as here, had only four claws; it had originally five, but each
fifth claw was removed, to disguise the fact that it was an Imperial piece stolen from
the Palace Collections. Few snuff-bottles have five-clawed dragons.
20. Opaque white
glass with plum-blossom in black. The glass in this two-layer type is carried out as in
a cameo, not moulded and applied later. 21. Carved red lacquer. The classic period for
this work is the Yung Lo period (1403-1425) of Ming. Some of the finest pieces of this
early Chinese work are now in Japan, where they have always been prized. Though
the’carved red lacquer was successfully made in Japan, the gold-powdered work of Japan
was never perfected in China. No gold lacquer snuff-bottles exist. 22. Porcelain of
a beautiful ivory-like white moulded in high relief. This style at its best is one of
the most effective decorations and is peculiar to snuff-bottles
23. A beautifully adapted marking in some form of agate. 24. An especially fine piece of
porcelain with “flambe” glaze, rhjs glaze was first perfected in the Yung-cheng period
(1723-1735). This specimen is marked, not with a date, but with words meaning “precious
jewel.” The bluish passages in these glazes are due not to added colouring matter, but
to opalescence, a phenomenon of light-dispersal similar to that which makes cigarette-
smoke look blue in certain lights and brown or white in others. 25. An agate bottle
forming an effective contrast to No. 23. 26. An eagle pouncing on its prey: carved cameo
agate. The relief is lower than in the black-and-white alass bottle (20) because the
glass-maker could be lavish with his material, while the hard-stone carver had to adapt
a carefully sought layer of black which he found in an otherwise pure white piece. 27. A
well-distributed marking of the stone here produces a cloudy effect. 28. A good
example of the delicate colour effects sometimes obtained with layered materials.
29. A
bold, effective marking. The agate bottle is beautifully hollowed out and is so
transparent that the spoon can be faintly seen through it. 30. A piece of amber with
markings like jasper. 31.A beautifully adapted piece of hard-stone
32.A remarkable piece of stone of the composite variety sometimes used in
European snuff-boxes and called pudding-stone. The Chinese artist has here managed to
avoid the look of plums in a cake by choosing a piece with one or two very large
circular markings which look almost artificial, though they are not. 33.A specimen of
cloisonne enamel. This technique has a long history in China, going back at least to the
middle of the 15th century. Good examples in snuff-bottle form are rare. 34.A piece of
jade of delicate marking and beautiful thin-sided bulbous form, with a long poem
engraved on one side of it. It has a green jade stopper. 35. A leaf-shaped bottle in
pure lapis-lazuli: one of the rarest stones used in snuff-bottles. 36.—A very rare
bottle of fine colour in which red predominates: probably a kind of jasper. 37. A very
rare shape with a square top, instead of the usual rounded button; the shape is
suggested by a bag with the mouth drawn in, made of leather. These satchels are
occasionally seen, but as a snuff-bottle form the effect is most uncommon. The flat form
has prevented the inside from being hollowed out completely
for, whereas glass paper-weights can be imitated after a fashion under modern
conditions, these bottles depend for their making not on any technical ingenuity but on
inherited artistic skill. Those with landscapes in faint colours with a verse of
poetry, for instance, have until lately been undeservedly disregarded, but it is safe
now, unfortunately, to say that they will never be repeated. Various theories are still
current as to how these glass bottles were painted inside. The opening of the mouth of
the bottle seems too small for the introduction of a brush, and it has been suggested
that an inner bulb was made and then painted in enamel colours which were fired, and
that the whole bulb was then enclosed in another layer of glass. The European glasses
produced in the 18th century in Bohemia with gold designs enclosed between two layers
of glass seem to some degree to supply an analogy.
But I myself remain convinced at present that the work was actually done by introducing
small brushes through the mouth
and so painting the inside, because in the collection of my late father, S. D.
Winkworth, was an agate bottle with interior painting. Obviously this can have been done
only by the skilful manipulation of small brushes. What seems extraordinary is that
quite good calligraphy could be done like this. Many examples are to be seen with
clearly written inscriptions and poems. A captious critic might perhaps claim that
Chinese snuff-bottles are unconnected with the long history of country house
collecting, and lack those associations which make heirlooms socially respectable,
while the mere purchase from shops or sale rooms of Chinese curios may seem a capricious
luxury. One does not find Chinese snuff-bottles in old collections like those of Ham
House, Syon or Uppark; they are absent from the cabinets of Hampton Court as much as
from those of country seats and manor houses, the glories
of which so often adorn the pages of COUNTRY LIFE. The reason for this is that the
snuff-bottle does not seem to have become an article of general use in China as early as
the 17th century, from which most of the Chinese and Japanese objects at Hampton Court
may be dated. They might indeed be thought to fall into the same category as the
Japanese lacquer and metal work referred to in some comparatively recent articles by the
well-known naturalist and collector, Collingwood Ingram. Such things can be made
interesting to country gentlemen by their association with natural history and travel,
but most of them nearly all, in fact found their way to these shores only in the latter
part of the last century, and few can be claimed, if indeed any can, as the inheritances
of old families or the characteristic ornaments of ancient and dignified houses. This
may be a mere accident; the smaller sorts of artistic objects tend to escape notice more
than fine furniture, porcelain
38. A glass bottle painted inside of the type referred to by Mr. Soame Jenyns in his
Chinese Export Art. 39. A coral bottle. This material was seldom used for bottles, on
account of the difficulty of finding a thick enough branch. It is extremely rare. 40.
An amber bottle with especially beautiful markings. 41. A monkey on a horse flying from
a fantastic monster: a clever use of accidental variations of colour in agate. 42 and
43. Two contrasted types of the hair-crystal variety of quartz; very closely matted
hairs and very sparse ones are equally rare and desirable.
or things of obvious intrinsic
value are likely to do. We know that small swords and daggers from Japan sometimes
reached Europe as early as the late 17th century; they are seen in 17th-century Dutch
still-life paintings. No snuff-bottle has received such honour, but there are instances
of snuff-bottles mounted in 18th-century gold cage work, like the rare glass scent-
bottles of “London jewellers’ work” which were formerly ascribed to Bristol. It is known
that lacquer inro, or medicine-cases, were occasionally in the possession of non-
Japanese in quite early times; a letter in the Will Adams correspondence is evidence of
this, in the early years of the 17th century; but no inro and no Chinese snuff-bottle,
with one possible exception, can at present be traced to the ownership of a resident of
these islands before quite recent times, when the great 19th-century collections of
Hart, Behrens, Hawkshaw and Gilbertson were formed. This one exception is still not
quite certain, and seems to depend largely on my memory. About twenty-five or thirty
years ago a number of snuff-bottles were exhibited in the British Museum in the King
Edward the Seventh galleries. One of these was of the interesting type in which glass is
used to imitate a precious substance. This was a common practice with the Chinese snuff-
bottle makers. Jade, agate and jasper were skilfully copied in glass; and in this
particular instance the substance imitated was the curious mineral realgar. The name is
of Arabic origin, and has associations with alchemy; the mineral was known to Pliny. “It
usually occurs,” we are told, “in association with the yellow arsenic sulphide,
orpiment.” We are already in the world of mineralogy with Norman Douglas, whose immense
erudition is, alas, now lost to us, while his name is remembered chiefly for his
entertaining satires. But we have here a clue which may lead far. Mr. Arthur Waley has
already pointed out the importance of alchemy in Chinese artistic and philosophical
history, both in his Travels of an Alchemist and elsewhere. We know that it was an
alchemist, Bottger, who discovered the secret of porcelain in Europe, and another,
Kunckel, who invented the ruby glass associated with his name. When we find this same
ruby glass, unknown in Europe except to Kunckel and his immediate associates in the
early years of the 18th century, appearing in China in the form not only of snuff-
bottles but of glass bowls, we realise that alchemy played a larger part in the
development of technique, all over the world, than is generally thought. It is still
uncertain how these secrets of alchemy reached China. Some of the ruby glass bowls are
dated K’ang-hsi (1662-1722). It is not impossible that some of the ruby glass snuff-
bottles may date from the first half of the 18th century. That the imitation realgar
bottles may be equally old is rendered possible by the record, dependent I admit on my
own memory, that one of them in the British Museum, seen by me thirty years ago, was
labelled “Sloane Collection.” I found, on a recent visit to the Museum, that this snuff-
bottle was not included in the group of objects assembled to illustrate the breadth of
Sloane’s interests. I hope it will be found and Mr. Soame Jenyns, whose work on the
associations between China and Europe entitled Chinese Export Art was recently published
by COUNTRY LIFE, assured me of his interest in the subject and of his intention to
search for the missing bottle. To be able to quote the name of Sir Hans Sloane as a hero
or patron of snuff-bottle collecting would indeed set the seal of venerable
respectability on the subject. At any rate, it may be said that the Sloane tradition
has not died out when we find such an enthusiastic country-dweller as Sir Noel Arkell
following in his footsteps as a collector of these rare things. Snuff-bottles,
originally carried in the sleeves of their Chinese owners, are highly portable and
wander everywhere. Some are actually still in use. They may be bought in the London
shops which deal in snuff and they may be found in many antique shops. The late Queen
Mary was a keen collector of them.
Their variety is endless, and is their chief charm. Porcelain, glass, semi-
precious stones, bamboo-root, lacquer and coral were all used. Ivory was a favourite
material and so was amber. Sir Noel Arkell has himself written on the subject, and I
shall here quote from his essay. “Snuff was introduced into China in or about the year
1582 A.D. by the famous Jesuit missionary Matteo Ricci, who brought it from Italy. He
presented it to the Emperor Wan Li, who in turn bestowed it on high officials for their
own use.” The essay goes on to suggest that the first snuff-bottles were of glass. As
glass was a rare and exotic substance in China in the 17th century, this fits in with
its use for containing a foreign drug. Snuff in China is, according to this essay, which
is based on information from one learned in Chinese subjects, denominated by words
pronounced bee yen, “nose smoke,” and the words also embrace opium, called “big smoke “;
tobacco is called ” little smoke.” COUNTRY LIFE ANNUAL, 1954 The snuff-bottle was
unknown as an object of practical use in Japan, though as a foreign curiosity it seems
to have been esteemed, for I possess a snuff-bottle of Chinese porcelain attached by a
cord to a netsuke or toggle, and, still odder, an ebony bottle similarly attached to an
ebony netsuke itself shaped as a snuff-bottle. In neither case is there the usual spoon
attached to the stopper, and these bottles, which both have wider necks than usual, must
have been used for carrying pills or medicine like the typical inro, which was
universally worn in Japan in the 17th and 18th centuries. The Japanese smoked tobacco in
very small metal pipes, but they do not seem to have used snuff at all. The practice of
smoking was, apparently, regarded as somewhat coarse in early times, whereas snuff seems
to have been in use among persons of elegance, perhaps because it was less offensive to
ladies. This seems to have been a world-wide custom, with Japan 59 the only exception;
for we know from prints that in Japan ladies also smoked the tiny Japanese pipe. Priests
and old-fashioned people still do so in Japan, and the value of a fine brocade tobacco-
pouch with a carved pipe-case attached may, in Japan, exceed the costliness of the most
luxurious jade or amethyst snuff-bottle, even at the present day. The great artist and
metalworker Natsuo, who died in 1898, himself made pipes, sometimes of gold. Though the
Chinese undoubtedly did and do smoke pipes at times, it seems that snuff was far more
general, and though I have seen an old Dresden porcelain snuff-box showing imaginary
Chinese smoking pipes, I suspect that this was partly because the 18th-century
imagination was vague about Orientals, and would have thought nothing of attributing
Turkish habits to Chinese. The only literature dealing with the makers of Chinese snuff-
bottles concerns a highly special problem about those bottles
44. An artistic example of
side painting, further improved by green handles and bands at top and bottom. 45. The
beauty of this piece of cornelian depends entirely on its delicately shaded colour.
46. A splendid specimen of unusually well-distributed spots of bright green. The
material is jadeite, not jade proper; in fact the popular bright green colour here seen
does not occur in true jade, which is of a different chemical composition. Jadeite is
actually the more valuable stone, especially for jewellery. 47. A most artistic effect
of colour in jadeite, well compared by the owner to the tint of a pool in a trout-stream
in chalky soil. 48. An especially fine and well-rounded piece of carving in coral one of
the gems of the collection. 49.A very rare variety of fossil-bearing stone, of coral
formation. This stone seems to have been especially rare and much prized in the Far
East. There is a kind of porcelain which imitates the effect very skilfully, made in
Japan about fifty years ago, and now almost unobtainable. It was invented by Makuzu
Kozan
50.A mother of pearl bottle in a pale celadon colour. 51.Siamese twin bottles with
only a film of glaze connecting the two porcelain receptacles. Compare No. 19.
52.A fine example of the best type of porcelain bottle with its own lid; the neck and
sides are in red and gold
which have the mark Ku Yueh Hsiian Old Moon Pavilion. These
are usually of glass, though porcelain specimens are known. The problems involved by the
meaning of this inscription are so complicated that I shall simply refer readers to Mr.
A. de Vere Bailey’s article on the subject in the Burlington Magazine (No. LXVII, 1935,
p. 78) and to the work of Miss Sheila York Hardy in the Transactions of the Oriental
Ceramic Society. The Percival David Foundation at 53, Gordon Square, possesses all the
available information; but those who wish to discover more about the makers of snuff-
bottles will have to be content with this, and with the statement in Mr. Soame Jenyns’s
Chinese Export Art that “Later glass snuff-bottles painted on the inside surface often
carry the names of Ma Shao Hsiian and Chi I-Chung.” For those who enjoy documentation
and historical research, the snuff-bottle offers too little material; for the pure
collector, almost too much. One could never make a complete collection, as one could, in
theory, make a complete collection of Rembrandt’s etchings; but there is a charm in
this absence of limit. One’s limits can be self-imposed, can correspond solely to one’s
own taste. Sir Noel Arkell’s collection, for instance, unlike that of Admiral
Woodwright, includes few, if any, of the pretty bottles of modern make whose chief
interest consists in the beauty of the stone from which they are carved. Admiral
Woodwright actually sent specimens of rare stones to China and had them carved into
bottles by craftsmen there, so it is said. The examples here illustrated are from one of
the most carefully chosen collections now in existence, at least the equal if not the
superior of the famous collection made by the late Mr. O. C. Raphael and bequeathed
recently to the British Museum, where it completes the early beginnings of snuff-bottle
collecting exemplified by the specimen in the collection of Sir Hans Sloane, who died in
1753, and whose bicentenary, as founder of the Museum, was recently celebrated.
Origional Article 1954
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