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A pretty dandy collection coming up September 12th in New York City at Christie's.
Looking forward to it.
Best Peter
Peter
Great collection, especially like the puddingstone bottles.
James
Dear Peter,
I take the opportunity to vent out what I am repeating in other places too, that the snuff bottles market is a shame. I did come to the snuff bottles field some years ago, after many years of interest in Chinese ceramic. I was expecting that the related worlds, especially under the market point of view, were similar. I was completely wrong!
In the porcelain field, there are some well settled points. If you have a Kangxi vase, it is Kangxi to anyone, regardless if you have found it in the rubbish or if it has been property of the Pope. If it has a good provenance, that’s fine, it will add something to it, but the important point is that it is a Kangxi vase.
It is not the same in the snuff bottles field. First at all there are much less knowledge there, less historical references. Probably in part due to that, the fact is that the snuff bottles World gravitates around a small group of 4 – 5 dealers who “makes” the market. Even the big Auction houses are totally depending from them, they are whom decide if a bottle is good or not, how much valuable and so on, based solely in their discretion.
If you have an imperial bottle and you want to sell it to either one of the big London’s Auction houses, you have absurd request (I will not be surprised if they will ask you a photo of yourself together with the emperor Qianlong holding the bottle?) while average bottles coming from famous collection, which in turn comes from one of those dealers, are sold as imperial.
It is a real shame. In the snuff bottles field, provenance is all. It has more importance than the object itself. Which in my opinion is an admission of ignorance (I don’t know what it is, so you have to prove that it belongs from XY). And who says that XY was competent and not just someone with a pocket big enough to accomplish the request of avid sellers?
In that upcoming auction there is the following bottle, attributed to the Imperial workshop:
I am happy with that attribution, because I have a very similar one, that you see here below in the attached pictures.
I do not know if these bottles are really Imperial workshop or not, may be yes because the quality is really good.
But for sure the two following bottles, lot 675 and lot 750, are not:
Those two bottles are an example of what I meant: NOT finely carved, NOT well polished, with all evidence good but average bottles. To call the lot 750 as Imperial a really shameless face is needed I think.
Giovanni
Hi Giovanni,
I concur with your post, sentiment and frustration.
I am no expert with imperial quality snuff bottles. Having posted that I am not new at it either.
Lot # 675 and #750 are not imperial. They are a joke that would never have passed the stringent test at the workshop.
I am in the same boat as you. Having to constantly bash my head up against the brick wall with dealings with the likes of christie's etc.
Last year I sent them some pictures of a large nephrite jade boulder carved with scholars and incised with imperial qianlong marks dating back to the year of dingmao (1747).
The pictures I sent were not of the highest quality etc. I did get a call from them and they told me that it was in their opinion unlikely to be imperial given the lack of high-quality in both carving and calligraphy that would be expected from the imperial jade workshop.
When I asked what do you mean by unlikely, they replied without appropriate provenance etc it would most likely not be genuine.
I have now just recently been able to decode the whole rock and it appears that this was a tribute item produced at or near that date by the salt merchants in Yangzhou and not done in the imperial workshop. The Yangzhou merchants along with the huizhou head merchants interacted with the most precious and expensive jade objects and other in the 18th century. These businessmen produced and procured objects for imperial use through the tribute system and manufacturing.
This I learned only recently after reading and then talking with the author of 'luxurious works: salt merchants, status and statecraft in the 19th century' by Yulian Wu asst professor history department Michigan state university.
The date, month, marks and poem on said piece match what the emperor qianlong was doing at the time in renaming a palace/residence 'a tranquil place'. I can't remember all of it but I do have a record of it.
Mark
Dear Mark,
that books looks interesting, I didn't know about that.
Your one with the Auction house is one of the many cases. I had some really bad experience, one of which is a real shame for Sotheby's.
Giovanni
Hi Giovanni,
If you get the chance it is a very good read on the salt merchants interaction with the qianlong period dynasty.
It puts a whole new viewpoint to the matter of trade and tributes etc.
The author is now in the process of gathering info etc for upcoming new book on jade during said period. She is very approachable and answered all my questions promptly.
Regards
Mark
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