Huge Ivory Column Bottle - intricately carved

Dear Joey,

Thank you for your information, it fits with my feelings on the very good quality polychromed ivory bottles and lacquered ones. My references are a bit dated so perhaps the understanding of these bottles has moved on anyway.

Another point raised by Stevens was that the Japanese made some coral snuff bottles but were unable to hollow them as well as they wanted and decided to stop making them and return to making more traditional Japanese items. The Marquess of Exeter book makes reference to an ivory bottle of a man holding a scroll (0.18) with polychrome enamels which was hollowed through a panel in the base. Another polychrome enamel figural bottle is the same (0.17) as is a plain ivory bottle (0.10) which stands out from others in being of flask form with inset circular panels.

Had the Chinese developed tools that allowed them to hollow bottles for the use of snuff that were beyond tools that the Japanese had then available as they had no real need to hollow items ? I would be interested to know how well hollowed the polychrome enamelled imperial bottles are in the Marquess of Exeter collection as it might add more to suggest a Japanese manufacture.

Dear Cathy,

I love the lion dogs on your Thai market bottles and was going to say they looked wrong because they have closed mouths. Chinese lion dogs have open mouths, Japanese ones (Shishi dogs) can have either closed or open mouths depending on if they depict a lion or a lion dog. Korean ones have closed mouths. Thai ones (Singha) I can't really comment on but I assume they were done to fit their market.

I have come close to a couple of larger ivory table bottles like ours recently but missed out so well done for being in the right place at the right time.

Regards, Adrian.