Views on banded agate bottle

[Joey Silver / Si Zhouyi 義周司]

Dear Inn Bok,

      I must say that I don't agree with you, as to the use of the banded agate as a base for an inside painted bottle.
      Truthfully, I find the composition claustrophobic (which is why I wouldn't buy it if it was on offer), but still am intrigued by the use of the natural material, which I think was well used.

      Best,
Joey

[Jungle Jas]

KK,
Unusual inside painted bottle, I wish I had found it.

Jas.

[OIB]

Samson,

Ha, ha, you are right ! My mind was on Jilin province of NE China and
the Chang Bai San there. My apology for moving the mountain of Tai
San from W. China to the NE !

Joey,

I was not generalising when I made the comment. I was making specific
reference to the bottle shown by KK. When I zoomed the picture, I just felt
that the proportion was not what I felt as right.
I have seen beautiful bottles in the collection of my colleagues of the
Nanyang group where Hebei's Ji School artist cleverly and tastefully blend
inside painting with well hollowed natural agates, crystals, etc...

Inn Bok

[Joey Silver / Si Zhouyi 義周司]

Dear Inn Bok,

     I understood, but still think the work is well done, if a bit too claustrophobic for my personal taste.
     I must admit that i did not understand what you meant by "the proportion"; I thought that the artist's idea was to accentuate the amount of snow and he succeeded in that.
Best,
Joey

[George]

Somehow... I feel that the band (Jade belt) on this bottle is heavily enhanced or painted... 

Never see any banded strip that is so white and opaque before...

Pin

I thought the same Pin with this bottle.. As with a few others that have been shared on forum, including others with white cameos. Most do not seem natural to me. An article from within Snuff Bottle Review, vol 2, no 1, 1976, among the ones on the way to Pat, is an article, Chinese Snuff Bottles and the Great Exhibition of 1851.

A snippet from the article... 

"Agate snuff bottles were more frequently made by the lapidaries of Oberstein, Prussia than by Chinese workers. Oberstein snuff bottles were displayed and sold at the Great Exhibition of 1851. The zonal structure of agate and the color can be altered and accentuated by staining and by heat processes. These processes were used by the Oberstein lapidaries and similar techniques were also known to, and were used by the Romans. They used the process to accentuate the color contrasts when carving cameos. Similar methods of staining and treating agates may also have been known to the Chinese lapidaries. On bottle in the authors collection has an obviously stained yellow orange band running across the middle of the bottle. I therefore decided to try and find out more about the types of snuff bottles that were said to have been exhibited and sold at the exhibition".