Snuff bottle facts for kids
Snuff bottles were used during the Qing Dynasty to contain powdered tobacco. Smoking tobacco was illegal during the Qing Dynasty, but the use of snuff was allowed because the Chinese considered snuff to be a remedy for common illnesses such as colds, headaches and stomach disorders. Therefore, snuff was carried in a small bottle like other medicines. The snuff bottle replaced the snuff box used by Europeans.
History
Tobacco was introduced by the Portuguese to the court at Beijing some time during the mid- to late-16th century. It was originally smoked in pipes before the establishment of the Qing Dynasty. The use of snuff and snuff bottles spread through the upper class, and by the end of the 17th century it had become a part of social ritual to use snuff. This lasted through most of the 18th century. Eventually, the trend spread into the rest of the country and into every social class. It was common to offer a pinch of snuff as a way to greet friends and relatives. Snuff bottles soon became an object of beauty and a way to represent status and wealth.
The use of snuff increased and decreased with the rise and fall of the Qing Dynasty and died away soon after the establishment of the Republic of China. However, contemporary snuff bottles are still being made, and can be purchased in souvenir shops, flea markets and museum gift shops. Original snuff bottles from the Qing period are a desirable target for serious collectors and museums. A good bottle has an extra quality over and above its exquisite beauty and value: that is touch. Snuff bottles were made to be held and so, as a rule, they have a pleasant tactile quality.
Apart from the original snuff bottles, snuff bottles had expanded to a new genre of inside painting in the late Qing Dynasty. The inside painting was a skill that complied with traditional Chinese painting and the workmanship of original snuff bottles. Many western traders favoured this exquisite craft at that time and collected the majority of high-quality old snuff bottles. The works of four major inside painters such as Ma Shaoxuan and Ye Zhongsan's are appeared in the famous auctions.
So far, the inside painted snuff bottle is still being produced and regards as a work of art. Some master's work such as Wang Xisan are considered to be precious artwork instead of souvenir crafts.
Materials and sizes
The size of a snuff bottle is small enough to fit inside the palm. Snuff bottles were made out of many different materials including porcelain, jade, rhinoceros horn, ivory, wood, coconut shells, lapis lazuli, gneiss, cork, chalcedony, jasper, carnelian, malachite, quartz, tortoiseshell, metal, turquoise, agate, mother-of-pearl, and ceramic, though probably the most commonly used material was glass. The stopper usually had a very small spoon attached for extracting the snuff. Though rare, such bottles were also used by women in Europe in Victorian times, with the bottles typically made of cut glass.
Chinese snuff bottles were typically decorated with paintings or carvings, which distinguished bottles of different quality and value. Decorative bottles were, and remain, time-consuming in their production and are thus desirable for today's collectors.
"Inside painted" bottles
Inside painted are glass bottles which have pictures and often calligraphy painted on the inside surface of the glass.
Their scenes are an inch or two high and are painted while manipulating the brush through the neck of the bottle at times only a quarter inch across, in reverse. Ursula Bourne, in her treatise on snuff, suggested that artisans painted on their backs to make it easier to work through the narrow opening. A skilled artist may complete a simple bottle in a week while something special may take a month or more to half a year and the best craftsmen will produce only a few bottles in a year.
Gan Xuanwen, also known as Gan Xuan has long been recognized as an important early artist of inside-painted snuff bottles in China. Quite a number of his bottles carry cyclical dates together with a reign period, and hence his works can be dated for certainty to roughly the first quarter of the 19th century, during the late Jiaqing (1796-1820) and early Daoguang (1821-1850) reigns of the Qing dynasty (1644-1911).
It was not until the early 19th century and late in the Jiaqing reign that snuff bottles decorated with inside painting came to the fore. The inspiration of inside-painted snuff bottles might have originated from the court, but did not receive any support of the imperial workshops. Nevertheless, this kind of snuff bottles quickly became the subject of acquisition for a new group of patrons, comprising officials, nobles, scholars and businessmen. Eventually the craft gained immense momentum in the late Qing and the early Republic periods, i.e. from the late 19th to the early 20th centuries. In Beijing, there were three renowned and influential masters, namely Zhou Leyuan, Ma Shaoxuan, Ding Erzhong and Ye Zhongsan. Inside painted bottles are still made extensively for collectors and becoming more valuable as work of art in the modern times.
Inside painted bottles themes include landscapes, bird-and-flowers, figures and auspicious themes. They are viewed as miniature paintings within the bottle.
