About This Forum

This snuff bottle community forum is dedicated to the novice, more experienced, and expert collectors. Topics are intended to cover all aspects and types of bottle collecting. To include trials, tribulations, identifying, researching, and much more.

Among other things, donations help keep the forum free from Google type advertisements, and also make it possible to purchases additional photo hosting MB space.

Forum Bottle in the Spotlight

Charll shared this beautiful Xianfeng (1851-1861) dated bottle depicting NeZha combating the Dragon King amongst a rolling sea of blue and eight mythical sea creatures.


Chinese Snuff Bottle Discussion Forum 中國鼻煙壺討論論壇
March 28, 2024, 04:35:46 am
Welcome, Guest. Please login or register.

Login with username, password and session length
 
  Home Help Search Contact Login Register  

Engraved Peking Glass Bottle - From Stanford University Museum Collection

Pages: [1] 2
  Print  
Author Topic: Engraved Peking Glass Bottle - From Stanford University Museum Collection  (Read 1730 times)
0 Members and 2 Guests are viewing this topic.
Joey Silver / Si Zhouyi 義周司
Private Boards
Hero Member
***
Gender: Male
Posts: 11282


« on: March 25, 2016, 12:09:49 pm »

Guys,
   
    Here is the little article:

"The Stanford Daily, Volume 136, Issue 67, 28 January 1960

Museum to Show New Acquisitions
An unusual jade incense burner, given by Millard C. White of Oakland, and a valuable collection of 136 Chinese snuff bottles, given by Mr. and Mrs. Russell J. Miedel of San Mateo, will be shown at the Stanford Museum through Sunday as part of "Major Accessions, 1954-,'59." The incenser dates from the late 18th century, and the snuff bottles, which are created from a variety of semi precious stones and glass, are of the 17th through 19th centuries. The Museum is open daily from 1 to 5 p.m. Admission is 25 cents."

    I have a friend, Mel Bacharach, who is both a snuff bottle collector and an alumnus of Stanford. I also have a cousin from Israel, presently finishing up his PHD at Stanford. I have copied down the number (1974.242.277), and will ask them if one or the other can get us the info.

    But Pat, I'm sorry, but I think you are wrong when you say the number 1974 is not the year it was accessioned to the museum. If you notice, the article mentions 1954-'59 for that group. There is no reason that someone could not have given this bottle in 1974. Even more, sadly, someone with access could have switched bottles any time between 1974 and the time the bottle was de-accessioned.

    For example, Roland Yazhari, an Iranian national, who claimed to Jews that he was Jewish; and to Christians and secular people, that he was Baha'i; and who may well have been either or a Shi'a or Sunni Moslem. 
___________________________________________________________________________________________________________
    Portlander pleads guilty to stealing Chinese antiques

The FBI catches Roland Yazhari taking a prized snuff bottle from a museum

Thursday, November 16, 2000
By Mark Larabee of The Oregonian staff
Roland Yazhari pretended to be a scholar when he went to the Princeton University Art Museum on June 26, 1998, to view a large and historically important collection of antique Chinese snuff bottles. But the curators at Princeton were suspicious. And rightly so. Yazhari, a Portland resident, recently pleaded guilty to theft, ending an FBI investigation begun after museum curators discovered in 1997 that two of the university's valuable bottles had been stolen. Three years earlier -- in March and September of 1994 -- Yazhari sought access to the museum's collection of 570 snuff bottles, and was the last person to view the bottles before the theft was discovered. The missing bottles were from the Ch'ien Lung period, which went from 1736 to 1795. They were valued at $142,500.
Agents eventually discovered that the bottles had been sold at auctions in Hong Kong, one at Christie's in April 1996 and the other at Sotheby's a month later, and that Yazhari consigned both bottles to the auction houses. He was arrested in Portland in December 1998. An Iranian immigrant who came to the United States with his parents, Yazhari is a graduate of Beaverton High School and holds a master's degree in education from Harvard University, according to the FBI.
The snuff bottles are popular in international art circles and the major auction houses have specialty shows dedicated solely to them. The Chinese began making the tiny, painstakingly crafted bottles in the mid-17th century to hold snuff, a combination of spices and powdered tobacco, which they inhaled through the nose for medicinal purposes. They were fashioned from jade, ivory, glass and porcelain and carved in relief, set with gems or hand painted on the inside. "They became a very popular collectors item," said Cary Liu, associate curator of Asian art at Princeton. "It's a fascinating cultural phenomenon, the spread of these things."
The rich and the royal of China built up vast collections of bottles as snuff's popularity rose. Bottles once owned by emperors -- marked with a seal from the imperial court -- are the most valued today. Most prized bottles
The two Princeton bottles -- painted enamels on metal -- were made by imperial craftsmen, said Robert Chasin of Los Angeles, second vice president of the International Chinese Snuff Bottle Society, a group of about 500 collectors and dealers. A similar bottle sold for more than $200,000 in a Hong Kong auction Nov. 1, he said. "If those bottles came up for auction today, they would be getting the same money for them," he said. "Those types of bottles are probably the most prized." Yazhari aspired to become a part of the collectors' circle, though it's unclear whether he formally joined the international society. In 1995, he was quoted by the Xinhua News Agency in a story on China's art auctions as someone who runs an art gallery in New York. He was the only Westerner who placed a bid that day in Beijing, according to the story. Chasin said he remembers meeting Yazhari in the early 1990s at one of his group's annual conventions. Soon after the meeting, he said Yazhari tried to sell him the Princeton snuff bottles. "I and other people in the society received a letter and two photographs from this guy," Chasin said. "Quite frankly, I had no idea they were missing from Princeton." When the thefts came to light years later, Chasin said the news made quite a stir in the small group of serious collectors and dealers. But he thought the case had slipped away. In reality, the FBI was waiting for Yazhari to make his next move.
Video cameras ready

When Yazhari made the June 1998 appointment to see Princeton's bottle collection for a third time, the curators in New Jersey were ready. They called the FBI, which set up video cameras. The sting caught Yazhari stashing a $75,000 snuff bottle into his pants pocket, and he was arrested as he left the building, according to court records. A federal grand jury in New Jersey indicted him for the thefts the following December, charging interstate transport of stolen property and theft of major artwork. That same month in Portland, the FBI arrested Yazhari on the New Jersey warrant. Nearly two years after the arrest, Yazhari, 35, has pleaded guilty to the thefts and has agreed to pay restitution. He faces a maximum of 10 years in prison on each of three theft counts, said Barry Sheldahl, an assistant U.S. attorney in Portland. Sentencing is set for Jan. 8 in U.S. District Court. Yazhari's attorney, Ruben Iniguez, said he will seek probation given that Yazhari served two months in jail after his initial arrest. "This gentleman has no prior record," he said. "This is out of character for him. There are some issues of diminished capacity." The stolen snuff bottles have been recovered -- coincidentally the same person bought both -- and returned to Princeton. They will be among about 400 featured next year in a book on the Princeton collection by the International Chinese Snuff Bottle Society, Chasin said. "The Princeton collection is one of the finest collections held by a university or museum in the world," Chasin said. "They are very important bottles in a very important collection." The book will not mention the thefts, he said.

___________________________________________________________________________________________________________

    In 1995, I was asked by Steven Little (at the time, Pritzker Curator of Asian Arts at the Art Institute of Chicago) to go over their snuff bottle collection, and advise them what was superb, what was great, what was mediocre, and what should be used for target practice (I'm joking, almost). 

    The collection was given primarily by Kate Sturges Buckingham between 1889 and 1938 (and by her estate - she died in 1937, but had left bequests in her will),  the majority of the bottles given in memory of her late sister, Lucy Maud Buckingham who'd died in 1925. This is the accession # of a 'ballast bottle', given in the 1925 gift:  1925.1198.

    But this collection was added to at least 20 times between 1938 and 1978, when there was a new USA-PRC on trade in antiquities and antique objects possibly looted from China. They stopped accepting gifts of snuff bottles and other objects, unless the objects were 'important' and had good provenance.

    Best,
Shabbat Shalom,
Joey
Report Spam   Logged

Joey Silver (Si Zhouyi 義周司), collecting snuff bottles since Feb.1970

Pages: [1] 2
  Print  
 
Jump to:  

Powered by EzPortal