Here is a recent addition for this thread....
Description Rock crystal snuff bottle of rounded rectangular form, evenly hollowed, with a broad slightly concave lip, and a wide rounded oval footrim surrounding a flat recessed base; the body carved in low relief with a continuous winter landscape scene of trees, rocky outcrops and a pavilion in the distance. Lavender blue jade stopper set in a gilt-silver collar, attached to a wavy-stemmed bone spoon.
Height w/o stopper: 6.6 cm
Tentative dating: 1760–1860
Commentary This bottle belongs to a group of similar examples from an as yet unidentified workshop active in China from around the mid-1700s up to the late 1880s. These bottles share a number of characteristic features, notably that they are almost always carved employing a mix of very low relief and lightly incised lines. The stone most favoured by this workshop is clear colourless natural quartz, occasionally using smoky quartz or citrine. The subject matter is invariably a wintry landscape scene, including one or more leafless trees to indicate the season. The use of icy clear quartz further reinforces this notion. And as with classical landscape painting, there is an economy of line, with areas of the bottle left untouched for the sake of balance and a sense of spaciousness.
Bottles from this group often appear to use perfectly flawless quartz crystal when in fact that is not always the case. Clever use is made of any natural faults, incorporating them into the overall design. On the bottle seen here there are some wispy opaque threads running through the stone, which have been disguised behind the twisting trunks of the trees in the foreground (see red dash lines in the second photo below).
For a discussion of the stopper, see the following thread…
http://snuffbottle.smfforfree.com/index.php/topic,3108.0.html 
