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A CHALCEDONY AGATE 'LIU HAI AND FISHERMAN' SNUFF BOTTLE Suzhou, 1770-1850 image 1
A CHALCEDONY AGATE 'LIU HAI AND FISHERMAN' SNUFF BOTTLE Suzhou, 1770-1850 image 2
PROPERTY FROM THE FRANCINE AND BERNARD WALD COLLECTION OF FINE CHINESE SNUFF BOTTLES
Lot 246

A CHALCEDONY AGATE 'LIU HAI AND FISHERMAN' SNUFF BOTTLE
Suzhou, 1770-1850

17 March 2025, 09:00 EDT
New York

Sold for US$6,400 inc. premium

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A CHALCEDONY AGATE 'LIU HAI AND FISHERMAN' SNUFF BOTTLE

Suzhou, 1770-1850
Of small, rounded tapering square shape, carved in a continuous scene in deep relief with a figure of Liu Hai atop his mythical toad with a plume emitting upwards from its mouth and centered by two small bats with a fruiting tree, possibly peach, alongside growing from a serrated rockwork outcrop on one narrow side, the scene continuing on the reverse with a fisherman holding a rod and line above breaking waves from which emerges a carp and a long lingzhi spray alongside a magical serrated rockwork island and moon on the other narrow side, below a short slightly waisted neck with flat rim and small mouth, unusually supported on a slightly rounded and tapering ogival foot ring and convex base.
2in (5cm) high, stopper

Footnotes

1770-1850 蘇作瑪瑙刻劉海漁夫鼻煙壺一件

For a smaller (4.2cm) chalcedony agate bottle of dark honey tone carved with Liu Hai and his three-legged toad emitting a vapor plume from his mouth, see Robert W. Kleiner, Chinese Snuff Bottle from the Mary and George Bloch Collection, Hong Kong, 1987, p. 111, no. 155

For another chalcedony agate Suzhou bottle similarly carved with a fisherman with bent rod catching a large carp but ungenerously dated by cyclical date to 1877, rather than 1817, see Sotheby's Hong Hong, 5 November 1997, lot 2139

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