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PROPERTY FROM THE FRANCINE AND BERNARD WALD COLLECTION OF FINE CHINESE SNUFF BOTTLES
Lot 263
A SUPERB INSCRIBED WHITE JADE 'TAO QIAN SUBJECT' SNUFF BOTTLE Probably Suzhou, 1730-1820
17 March 2025, 09:00 EDT
New YorkSold for US$23,040 inc. premium
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Dessa Goddard
Senior Vice President, US Head, Asian Art Group
Michael Hughes
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I-Hsuan Chen
Senior Specialist
A SUPERB INSCRIBED WHITE JADE 'TAO QIAN SUBJECT' SNUFF BOTTLE
Probably Suzhou, 1730-1820
of rounded shape, beautifully carved in very low relief with a garden terrace vignette with Tao Yuanming (real name Tao Qian) and his boy assistant clutching a potted chrysanthemum, the scene bordered by pine and rockwork to one side and wutong, chrysanthemum and rockwork to the other, the reverse side with a four-line, twenty-one character, raised inscription mentioning Tao Qian, followed by the signature Zigang, all below a short waisted neck with flat rim and wide mouth opening to an extremely well-hollowed interior, supported on a flat oval base.
2 1/4in (5.7cm) high, stopper
of rounded shape, beautifully carved in very low relief with a garden terrace vignette with Tao Yuanming (real name Tao Qian) and his boy assistant clutching a potted chrysanthemum, the scene bordered by pine and rockwork to one side and wutong, chrysanthemum and rockwork to the other, the reverse side with a four-line, twenty-one character, raised inscription mentioning Tao Qian, followed by the signature Zigang, all below a short waisted neck with flat rim and wide mouth opening to an extremely well-hollowed interior, supported on a flat oval base.
2 1/4in (5.7cm) high, stopper
Footnotes
1730-1820 白玉刻陶淵明愛菊圖帶詩文鼻煙壺一件
或爲蘇州工
Provenance:
The Jade Collector, Los Angeles, California, October 2000
來源：
The Jade Collector，洛杉磯，加利福尼亞，2000年10月
The inscribed poem describes the Chongyang festivities in the ninth month of the year, recalling Tao Qian's love of chrysanthemum.
For another extremely fine white jade bottle with the same subject matter and attributed to Suzhou, see Michael C. Hughes, The Chester Beatty Library, Dublin, Chinese Snuff Bottles, Baltimore, 2009, pp. 56-57, no. 40. The author discusses the attribution based on similar features seen in the Wald bottle that includes the literary subject matter, exceedingly fine low-relief carving, the simple flat foot and the elegant, raised calligraphy. Suzhou attracted cultural aesthetes like scholar poets, painters, calligraphers and musicians to the province and which unsurprisingly made its way into the decorative repertoire. On this bottle we see the scholar with his ever-present assistant, engaged in pleasant activities within a relaxed idyllic rural setting, far from the stresses of cosmopolitan city life. While the carving is not typical of the more favored high-relief decoration of the Suzhou school, it is still of an extremely high caliber.