If your like myself, a novice/beginner collector of porcelain bottles, here is some useful information from an article titled "Blue and White Snuff Bottles" by Dennis Crow within the Sept/Oct 1990 issue of Arts of Asia..
The article is very lengthy and informative.. Just want to share some of the highlights that can be useful ..
Three GroupsBlue and white bottles can be divided into three major groups. Imperial, official, and common or people's ware.
The first and most important group is made up of bottles commissioned for the court, and these are usually referred to as Imperial bottles. They are of the finest quality in body, shape and design, showing a master's hand in the exactness of detail as well as in the charm of the free-style designs of the early Ming wares that they follow. Imperial bottles are always marked with Imperial seal mars, which are much finer and more precise than reign marks found on other types of bottles.
Official bottles ( second group ) were not ordered by the court but by officials working for the government as well as by other wealthy Chinese. Although the quality of the official bottles was often as good as the Imperial bottles, they would never exactly copy the designs of the Imperial bottles, but would vary a little. If a seal was used, it would be either a reign mark or a studio workshop seal, and these were less carefully drawn than the seals under Imperial control.
The poorest grade bottles ( common or people's ware ), which were produced in the largest quantity make up the third group. For the most part these are crudely made with very little thought given to the shape or design. Many of the bottles in this group were intended to be thrown away after use so their inherent value was of little importance. Although mass produced, many of them have great charm in their own way.
Four Sub-ClassificationsThe three main groups of bottles can be divided into four sub-classifications. Plain, underglaze blue and white on a soft paste body, white and copper-red, underglaze blue, and white with overglaze enamel decoration. Underglaze blue decoration on a white or near white porcelain body is the main characteristic that ties these four classifications together.
During the Ch'ing dynasty the blue color was made from cobalt extracted from Chinese soil, and after firing varied from gray to almost black, sometimes coming close to purple. As a rule, the purer the paste and the cobalt, the better the bottle. However, many collectors prefer the porcelain to be somewhat off white.
The underglaze blue and copper-red class of bottle is made in the same way as the plain blue and white, but copper oxide is added to the design to produce, at the best, a cherry-red color. Unfortunately, copper oxide is very difficult to fire successfully and harder to control than cobalt, and the result is usually more of a grayish-pink to brown. Copper oxide can also bleed and run in the firing. This is very unsatisfactory for most wares, but in the case of snuff bottles, many potters have used it to their advantage. Tremendous numbers of blue and white and copper-red bottles were produced in the first half of the nineteenth century. Many of them were fine examples of good quality. Their subject matter was diverse, and included endless numbers of figures from Chinese folklore, landscapes, scenes from popular Chinese literature, and son on...
Two underglaze blue on soft paste bottle groupsUnderglaze blue on soft paste bottles can be divided into two types. One has a steatitic body ( composed of petuntse and steatite ), and the other a porcelain body with a coating of steatite. Steatite is the buff or cream-colored, fine-grained and talc like soapstone called hua-shih. These soft paste bottles are opaque and have designs in various shades of blue over a light cream colored body, usually with a finely crackled clear glaze overall.
The most common types in this class are bottles with several colored enamels in soft pastel shades, and bottles with only one color of enamel decoration, often orange.
In addition to the enamel types mentioned, there is a blue and white bottle with a much brighter and thicker, and more crudely applied colored enamelling. This type has much less sophisticated decoration. As a rule, these bottles have an underglaze blue border design and an overglaze enamel pattern of figures or foliage and flowers. Most fall in the common or people's ware group and were used mainly for medicine rather than snuff.
