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Bottle ID: 458
'DOUBLE' BOTTLE, INCISED TWO SISTERS, POEM
Date: 1875-1908
Height: 41 mm
Bamboo, small, ‘double’ snuff bottle, carved from one cross-section, with a smoothly polished vignette in the center naturally formed from the cortex of the stalk and with the natural grain fanning out to ‘frame’ the central picture, the ‘front’ panel incised and inked to depict the ‘two sisters’, Daqiao and Erqiao, sitting at their desk by a curtained window, with an open book and a teacup in front of them, looking whimsically out, with a six-character inscription down the right hand side of this panel refering to the carver of the bottle, Chang Chung Heng together with his seal, the ‘back’ panel of the bottle with a four-character inscription, which translates as: At Bronze Bird the Springtime of Love is Deep and Strong.
Similar Examples:
Crane Collection no. 661.
Ip Yee and Lawrence C.S. Tam. Chinese Bamboo Carving Part 1, Hong Kong Museum of Art, 1978, pp. 510-511, fig. 185.
Lawrence, Clare. The Alexander Brody Collection of Chinese Snuff Bottles, 1995, p. 40, no. 56.
Moss, Hugh. Chinese Snuff Bottles no. 3, p. 43, fig. 45.
Provenance:
Asian Art Studio
Bamboo as a material for snuff bottles was very appealing to the Daoist scholar as it was so simple and commonplace in China yet could be made into a powerful and intriguing work of art. Jiading in Jiangsu Province was one of the most famous centers for the carving of bamboo and was mentioned by Zhao Zhiqian in his 19th century writings on snuff bottles entitled Yonglu Xianjie. This small 'double' bottle is divided between the two sides by an inner wall, so that, unlike modern copies, two types of snuff could be contained in one bottle and as a general rule, the smaller the bottle, the more expensive was the snuff that it held.
The inscription on the reverse of the bottle references lines in the Tongque tai fu (Rhapsody on Bronze Bird Tower) attributed to Cao Zhi (192-232):
"There stand a pair of towers to left and right, oh,
Jade Dragon and Golden Phoenix by name,
To hold the two Qiao sisters from the Southeast,
With whom he takes his pleasure morning and evening".
A similar example without the incising and made as a more usual ‘single’ bottle is in the permanent collection of the Hong Kong Museum of Art and is illustrated in ‘Chinese Bamboo Carving’ by Dr. Ip Yee, a catalogue published for the seminal 1978 bamboo exhibition in Hong Kong.