Message #31287

[Wattana]

Hi David,

As you have not yet decided if snuff bottle collecting is a hobby you want to pursue, I think you can take a pause in book purchasing once you have Lilla Perry's "Adventures of a Collector", Bob Stevens' "Collectors' Book of Chinese Snuff Bottles", and a few auction catalogues.

The one by Robert Kleiner that Joey mentioned is good, as this covers a lot of the Bloch collection in a single volume. For your next step I would recommend the 2-volume J&J Collection by Hugh Moss, Victor Graham and Ka Bo Tsang. It's a bit pricey, but the quality of all the bottles, the research, the text and the photography are excellent. This collection has a different perspective from the Bloch one, which was largely hand picked for them by three Western dealers over a relatively short space of time. By contrast the J&J Collection was started in the 1930s, and put together by two generations of ethnic Chinese, applying Chinese taste.   

Tom