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A shadow agate snuff bottle

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Author Topic: A shadow agate snuff bottle  (Read 658 times)
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Steven
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« on: June 24, 2015, 05:56:21 pm »

It has been so quite here these two days.Smiley

Sharing a shadow agate snuff bottle I acquired a while back.

Its 2.5' tall , its not so well hollowed  as I was expecting , kinda of heavy compare to the size.

Any comments are welcome as always.

Steven


* $_57 (1).jpg (160.2 KB, 1257x1600 - viewed 46 times.)

* $_57.JPG (169.32 KB, 1221x1600 - viewed 43 times.)

* $_57 (2).jpg (154.73 KB, 1550x1600 - viewed 34 times.)

* $_57 (4).jpg (207.8 KB, 1500x1600 - viewed 26 times.)
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Pat - 查尚杰
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« Reply #1 on: June 24, 2015, 08:52:36 pm »

Nice bottle Steven.  And great silver stopper.    Appears to have some age.   Middle to Late 19th? 
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« Reply #2 on: June 24, 2015, 09:32:13 pm »

I agree.. Nice bottle and does appear to have some age..

A little confusing how the carver did so much undercutting.  It's not like there are any soft spots within shadow agates.. Kind of odd..

I see a little dendritic action going on within the shadows.. Kind of looks a bit like a mermaid..
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« Reply #3 on: June 24, 2015, 11:56:43 pm »

Hi Steven,

Your are right - it has been quiet on the forum lately!

I agree that your bottle has some age. Thanks for sharing. From the pictures alone I'd place it at late 19th century, but Joey may give you a better estimate when he visits you and handles it. By the way, shadow agate bottles are often not too well hollowed. I would say most of the ones I have handled feel a little heavy.

George, I am not sure what you mean by undercutting. All I see are slight indentations in the otherwise smooth surface. I'm guessing that the carver was 'teasing' the stone to see if he could find any markings worth 'editing' into something interesting.

Tom
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« Reply #4 on: June 25, 2015, 01:25:03 am »

Sure has been quiet...

I just have not had anything all that interesting come my way recently to share..

Yes, the indentations are what I am talking about Tom..

I'm not so sure about the searching ( teasing ) for images, etc within the shadows seems a likely reason for the undercutting..

If I were carving a piece of shadow agate with inclusions and on the hunt for some miraculous opportunity to highlight a yet undiscovered image, I would not do this kind of random gouging to my original piece of stone that I already carved into a nicely shaped bottle.  I "might" continue grinding but keeping the contour of the bottle, and gradually grind until something looked like a possible candidate... But then remember... You can see the very course abrasive ( tool or paper ) used to create these undercuts.. Even if ya stumble onto something while in this initial ( 60/80 grit ) stage of abrasive searching. There are a number of other finer abrasives that are absolutely necessary to get the piece ready for polish.. In my mind the odds are that by the time you went through the remaining 4or 5 abrasives, the inclusion ( desired image ) would most likely be lost..

Just two cents !  Smiley



 
« Last Edit: June 25, 2015, 01:33:47 am by George » Report Spam   Logged

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« Reply #5 on: June 25, 2015, 01:33:46 am »

Well, as someone with stone working experience, your viewpoint is very valid. It does begin to look like the bottle was abandoned for some reason before being fully finished.
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« Reply #6 on: June 25, 2015, 01:45:02 am »

It does begin to look like the bottle was abandoned for some reason before being fully finished.

I think so too... I imagine he got the bottle to the desired shape, and stumbled into the pitted areas.. He may just have took a good gouge to see how deep those pits ran.. If not to deep, he may have had enough meat left on the bottle to grind down beyond the pitting, and still be able to save the bottle by reshaping it..

Guess we had to be there and looking over his shoulder to know for sure !  Cheesy
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« Reply #7 on: June 25, 2015, 07:57:47 am »

Dear George and Tom (and Steven of course!),
     Wonderful discussion on the possible thoughts of the carver!
I'd never even tried to put myself in the mental viewpoint of the carver, thinking why he did this or that.
I would just look at a bottle, and try to decide if the object before me 'worked' or 'didn't work'.
This is facinating.
Thank you,
Joey
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« Reply #8 on: June 25, 2015, 09:09:07 am »

Thanks George and Tom!

Love this kind of discussion. Keep going.Smiley

Steven
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« Reply #9 on: June 25, 2015, 11:41:57 am »

I'm guessing that the carver was 'teasing' the stone to see if he could find any markings worth 'editing' into something interesting.


Interesting coincidence that just this morning someone sent me several bottle pics for me to possibly purchase..

One of them a beautiful shadow agate showing a bird perched in a tree.  looking at the bottle from the front I would not have picked up on the fact that it is not a flat surface and the carver in fact did tease/chase the inclusion into the bottle to obtain the image as can be seen from the side picture looking across the bottle...

This one picture answered my very long term curiosity about how in the world these images can so miraculously appear on what I had always thought was a flat surface.. Having worked with a lot of shadow agates in the past, this always perplexed me as it seemed more like there was some kind of Chinese dying of the agate trick involved to obtain such perfect images on flat surfaces.  Yet that to seemed impossible because there are only a couple of types of agate that can be dyed, and as far as I know shadow agate can not be dyed. Some like YT's recently posted duck bottle appears a perfectly natural image.. But others with perfect little images, perfectly centered on a bottle never made any sense to me.. They went against everything I knew from working with a lot of shadow agate material.

I do not own , nor have I handled any agate bottles with images on them..  Maybe some of you guys can confirm if looking across the image ( like the pic below ) shows the carver chased the shadow inclusions down into your bottles managing to work the inclusions in such a way that an image like this perched bird are accomplished.

This pic makes perfect sense to me, and quite honestly opens up a whole new perspective...  This chasing/teasing of the shadow inclusions is a carvers very skilled and creative art form/technique that I had never been aware of before.



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« Reply #10 on: June 25, 2015, 11:50:14 am »

My goodness what an eye opening day for me !

I thought the image on YT's bottle was raised in a very slight cameo style..  It's not..

This is only the second time now that I have seen a picture looking across the surface of a shadow agate bottle with an image ..

YT's shows the same exact teasing/chasing of the inclusion as the image above..

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« Reply #11 on: June 25, 2015, 09:30:24 pm »

George,

Good idea to move some of these topics to the public area. I'll go along with that if everyone else is OK.

Yes, most shadow agates use this technique of dipping in and out of the bottle's surface plane.

One small comment about your response #9 in this thread. Both text and images go beyond the width of my computer screen! Not a huge problem for the photos, but it makes the text hard to read, as I have to scroll left and right for each line of writing. Is there any way to re-format your response, so the text is same width as other posts?   Wink
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« Reply #12 on: June 25, 2015, 10:54:56 pm »


One small comment about your response #9 in this thread. Both text and images go beyond the width of my computer screen! Not a huge problem for the photos, but it makes the text hard to read, as I have to scroll left and right for each line of writing. Is there any way to re-format your response, so the text is same width as other posts?   Wink

Got it...  Smiley

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« Reply #13 on: June 25, 2015, 10:59:52 pm »

George,

Yes, most shadow agates use this technique of dipping in and out of the bottle's surface plane.


I never knew this... Really answers a lot for me about these shadow agate images now..  
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« Reply #14 on: June 25, 2015, 11:04:46 pm »

Sure thing, please feel free to move it to the public section.
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