Footnotes

Treasury 7, no. 1471

沉香木雕人物風景鼻煙壺


Noble Occupations

Wood (lign aloes, chenxiangmu) and silver; with a convex lip and protruding concave foot surrounded by a flat footrim; carved with a continuous rocky landscape scene with pines and other trees, bamboo and ferns, in which, on one main side, a scholar stands with his walking staff gazing at a farmer with his water buffalo, with a woodcutter passing by a man fishing on the shore of a stream on the other main side, with formalized clouds around the shoulders, the lip encased in silver
1740–1850
Height: 7.04 cm. (including original stopper)
Mouth/lip: 0.69/1.99 cm
Stopper: wood (lign aloes, chenxiangmu), carved as a formalized chrysanthemum flower, with integral finial and collar; original
Condition: very thin stress cracks between segments of the wood where joined, one of which, at one shoulder, is wider than the others and has tiny associated chips to the relief detail; natural wear and softening of the surface detail; the stopper with a chip off one petal in the upper register of petals. General relative condition: excellent

Provenance:
Sotheby's, London, 7 June 1990, lot 386
Published:
Treasury 7, no. 1471

Commentary:
For the highly valued wood, chenxiangmu, see Treasury 7, no. 1470. This example has a faint but still discernible aroma of honey. It is also made in sections, as was Treasury 7, no. 1470, but only in so far as the neck is a separate piece. The main body is a single piece of wood.
This is one of the most spectacular examples in this rare wood for the snuff-bottle world. Among all aloes wood snuff bottles, this is the most fluently and finely carved. In the broader field of scholarly objects in the material, it is also among the best, with unusually well carved and complex detail. It may represent a high-level response to an imperial order, or, as is always possible given the system at the palace workshops of drawing artists from anywhere in the empire, a response by a southern carver seconded from his local workshop to the palace workshops. The original matching stopper is of an imperial type.
Apart from the similar stoppers, another feature links this to Treasury 7, no. 1470: they share the stylistic quirk of depicting the foliage of several trees in a very similar fashion. The pine with standard ranks of circular foliage with radiating lines is readily recognizable, but two other trees with radiating lines carved on foliage of pendant, folding-fan-shape, are difficult to identify. Exactly the same detailing is used for the foliage of a clump of what appear to be fern-like plants behind the water-buffalo, whereas on Treasury 7, no. 1470, another tree has the same fan-shaped foliage, but it is pointing upwards, which looks more pine-like.
For another superb bottle in this type of wood, see Hui and Sin 1994, no. 205 (once in the Claar and Reif collections). There the wood is described as yingmu (eagle wood), which is another term for the same wood, 'eagle' being the English corruption of agaru or a similar South Asian term for agalloch, and ying being the Chinese translation for the bird 'eagle'. There is another in Geng Baochang and Zhao Binghua 1992, no. 428.


漁樵耕讀四事圖

沉香木、銀；凸唇、突出凹底、平底圈足；雕刻通體鄉下景致，一正面有高士望耕田的農民，一正面有樵夫從釣魚的漁人走過，斜肩緣雕形式化雲紋，唇以銀包裝

1740～1850
帶原件蓋高：7.04 厘米
口經/唇經：0.69/1.99 厘米
蓋：沉香木，雕形式化的菊花；與頂飾、座為一體；原件
狀態敘述：木塊連結處呈微細應力破裂，一側面肩緣的破裂稍微大點，此處雕刻的細節有所損害；木料呈現合乎常情的消耗；蓋上層一個花瓣有缺損；一般相對的狀態：極善

來源：
蘇富比，倫敦，1990年6月7日，拍賣品號386
文獻﹕
Treasury 7, 編號1471

說明：
壺身由一塊沉香木作成，頸部是接上的另一塊。木材珍貴，雕刻精致，原件的蓋是宮廷式的，雖然不知道它是甚麼地方的作坊出產，可測定是奉詔而作的。Treasury 7，編號1470帶類似的蓋，刻樹葉的表現方式也相同。牛後邊的葉子有點像國畫點葉的介字點法，編號1470呈同一個刻法，儘管不是垂的，是由下而上的。

Hui and Sin 1994 編號205 是另一件精彩的沉香木鼻煙壺（原來屬於Claar珍藏和Reif珍藏），雖然說是鷹木作的，那不過是沉香木的異名﹕英語eagle 是古印度語"阿加魯"（沉香木）的音譯，而華語"鷹"就是eagle的意譯。耿寶昌、趙丙驊1992，編號428也是一件。