Snuff Bottles Arrived

Hi David,
Just dropping you a note to let you know that your package arrived yesterday. As always, everything is perfectly intact and I'm delighted with the bottles. I had forgotten that I had so many coming this time, but then life's been hectic. The best one of course is the egrets and cranes bottle, but that one is the one I had been anticipating the most as well.

I hope you're enjoying your vacation, and I'm looking forward to seeing your offerings when you get back.

Thanks,
Heather

This has become a favorite thing of mine, collecting snuff bottles. These days I limit myself to inside-painted bottles, often called reverse-painted. This is because, being painted inside glass, the top layer, the finishing details on any other painting is the first on to go on, and the fill-in details and background colors go last. I've seen pictures of the "brushes" they use to do this, and they look like dental instruments, straight with a 1/16" right-angle bend at the tip, and able to hold only a miniscule dab of paint. It has to go in and out of the bottle through a very tiny neck.

They come from China. Most of the scenes on them are traditional Chinese scenes: landscapes, people in traditional clothing, flowers in still life, animals from their zodiac. Occasionally there is a copy of a piece of artwork, whether a painting, calligraphy poem, or even an antique decorated cooking vessel. They can look like a black & white sketch or an oil painting, depending on the skills and intent of the artist. Most of them range in size from two to three inches total height, so you can imagine how tiny the pictures inside are.

Beginning artists use thick-walled bottles, probably so as not to break them. Advanced artists paint in bottles so thin you can't actually see the glass on the sides of the painting. They go to special schools to learn this art, and since my main source has connections with the people at the Xisan Academy, that's where most of my painted bottles come from. He actually meets the artists, and occasionally his pictures of the bottles he's offering this time include the artist as well, sometimes with his/her family.

The bottles used to be inexpensive. Capitalism has changed that. Not only has China rediscovered its artistic roots, something "highly discouraged" during their cultural revolution under Mao, but these bottles have now become highly prized to give as high-class gifts. What once sold for $50-$100 now goes for a grand and up. This severely limits quantities available for export and international buyers who can afford them. I was lucky in discovering these gems at a time both when I could afford them and they were plentiful, and even luckier in finding a reputable seller. Scams abound. I started on eBay, and have wound up with a complete piece of crap (resin sold as jade, for example) on more than one occasion. Lately, a technique has been developed that involves photographic rather than painting skill. The result looks pretty enough but they are mass produced and essentially worthless.

I have collected another kind of snuff bottle as well, made not from glass but from rocks. You've likely all seen spheres and eggs carved from onyx or agate or other materials. I collect those same rocks in the form of snuff bottles. In addition to those, I have numerous jaspers, fossils, chrysocolla, rhodonite, rhodochrosite, jade, opal, garnet, and sapphire, just to name a few. Most of those stones I'd never heard of before I saw them in a snuff bottle, like piertersite, charoite, or seraphinite. The more precious the stone, the more teeny the bottle. The harder to carve, the more intricately designed, the higher the price. Some have silver footings, to help the bottles stand. Others don't, some so precarious that vibrations from walking across the room will tip them from their stands. Very few of them have ever been intended for actual use for holding snuff, especially modern ones. It both stains and stinks. But they still have caps with spoons attached to them, carrying out the illusion that they could/would be.

I didn't start out collecting snuff bottles. I started collecting Chinese dragons, and one day a painting of a dragon in a bottle introduced me to these little gems. I quickly learned which sellers were dependable, in either kind of bottle, and set about to collect at least one of everything good. Well, try, anyway. I didn't manage to collect anything of really high quality, because they have always been out of my budget. I was still going for quantity as well as quality, and compromises were necessary.

Not only did I collect to keep them, but I started to collect them as gifts. One year, well before prices rose, I contacted my main (get real! ONLY!) contact to the Chinese artists and asked if they could be commissioned in a particular design. The answer came back, yes they could, as long as a picture was provided for them to copy from and I was willing to meet the price. I was, and they arrived in time for that year's X-mas. The new domestic market keeps the artists too busy these days to do that again, even if I wanted to spend a grand or so.

The only other bottle I commissioned was through a Thai seller specializing in stone bottles. He's since quit selling them, but while he did they were the highest quality I was able to find in reasonable price ranges. Our Alaska trip a few years back included a stop at the Kobuk Valley Jade Co. store in Girdwood, where I picked up a couple pieces of Alaskan jade with an aim to get a special battle carved as a keepsake from the trip. It wound up taking over a year for a completed bottle to make its way back to me, but it's in the collection.

These days they sit in four totes stacked carefully on sturdy shelves, organized by type of bottle or design. Sunlight fades the paint after long exposure, so they stay protected in their dark little gift boxes. I don't take them out and look at them often, but enjoy when I do. Eventually they'll find an appropriate home in a display piece, but not for a while. In years to come, more of them will find their way to new homes under fancy wrapping paper and gift tags, but I'll keep the bulk of them as long as I can still enjoy them. And since there's still some room in the top of those totes, I'll still collect the occasional bottle when I can.