A carved pale-yellow porcelain 'Hugong' snuff bottle, Qing dynasty, 19th century. Estimate  240,000 — 260,000 HKD (28,673 - 31,063 EUR). Photo Sotheby's

6.7 cm., 2 5/8  in.

Provenance: Robert Hall, London, 1993. 

Exhibited: Robert Kleiner, Chinese Snuff Bottles in the Collection of Mary and George Bloch, British Museum, London, 1995, cat. no. 237. 
Chinese Snuff Bottles in the Collection of Mary and George Bloch, Israel Museum, Jerusalem, 1997.

Literature: Carol Michaelson, ‘The Use of Archaism as a Decorative Motif in Snuff Bottles’, Journal of the International Chinese Snuff Bottle Society, Winter 2000, p. 16, fig. 50. 
Hugh Moss, Victor Graham and Ka Bo Tsang, A Treasury of Chinese Snuff Bottles: The Mary and George Bloch Collection, vol. 6, Hong Kong, 2007, no. 1402

Notes: This and Sale 5, lot 145, of the same subject, come closest of all known carved porcelain figural snuff bottles to the carved porcelains of the nineteenth century. Both are obviously related in subject, scale, and quality to Sale 8, lot 1024, where reasons were offered for a late-nineteenth century date, the suggestion that the name (it that is what it is) on the bottom might be Jinzhuo 進拙 (Jinwei 進烓 is another possibility, but produces no breakthroughs), and recounted the story of Hu Gong. (The gourd and the staff also belong to the immortal Li Tieguai 李鐵拐, but Li is usually depicted as an emaciated beggar.)

The fact that access to the interior through the gourd is not at all convenient for a snuff taker suggests that the bottle may have been made for a collector’s market, not for use—although this would not alter the dating range, since such wares were produced from the Daoguang period onwards. 

This is the finest of the carved-porcelain figural bottles, the one that is in a class with the best works of the more famous carvers. As with their wares, a two-part mould defined a basic shape that the artist then finished with a great deal of surface carving. The mould joint is clearly visible on the unglazed interior.

Sotheby's. Snuff Bottles from the Mary and George Bloch Collection: Part X, Hong Kong, 01 Jun 2015, 10:00 AM