Snuff Bottle
1850-1900 (made)
| Artist/Maker | |
| Place of origin |
Snuff is powdered tobacco, usually blended with aromatic herbs or spices. The habit of snuff-taking spread to China from the West during the 17th century and became established in the 18th century. People generally carried snuff in a small bottle. By the 20th century these bottles had become collectors' items, owing to the great variety of materials and decorative techniques used in their production.
Object details
| Categories | |
| Object type | |
| Materials and techniques | Porcelain with painted decoration |
| Brief description | Chinese snuff bottle; 1850-1900, Qing Dynasty; porcelain, with painted decoration depicting a woman playing with children. |
| Physical description | The bottle is a cylindrical form with a wide flat neck-rim and no stopper. It is made of porcelain, painted in red, purple, blue, green, yellow and brown. The decoration depicts a woman playing with children. The receding foot is unglazed, with a high glazed indentation underneath; four-character Yongzheng (1723-35) mark in red regular script. The wide flat neck was probably designed to house a snuff stopper. |
| Dimensions |
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| Style | |
| Credit line | Given by Mrs Julia C. Gulland |
| Object history | Given by Mrs. Julia C. Gulland, accessioned in 1907. This acquisition information reflects that found in the Asia Department registers, as part of a 2022 provenance research project. |
| Production | The original register entry describes this bottle as nineteenth-century. |
| Subjects depicted | |
| Summary | Snuff is powdered tobacco, usually blended with aromatic herbs or spices. The habit of snuff-taking spread to China from the West during the 17th century and became established in the 18th century. People generally carried snuff in a small bottle. By the 20th century these bottles had become collectors' items, owing to the great variety of materials and decorative techniques used in their production. |
| Bibliographic reference | White, Helen. Snuff Bottles from China. London: Bamboo Publishing Ltd in association with the Victoria and Albert Museum, 1992. 291p., ill. ISBN 1870076109. |
| Collection | |
| Accession number | 692-1907 |
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| Record created | September 15, 1998 |
| Record URL |
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