Lot 471, A rare five-color overlay clear glass snuff bottle, 1760-1820; 2 ½ in. (6.4 cm.) high. Estimate $8,000 – $10,000. Price realised USD 16,250. Photo Christie's Image Ltd 2016.

The bottle is carved with a continuous design of lotus, begonia, peony and chrysanthemum blossoms in red, pink, yellow and turquoise-blue overlay, all growing from a single leafy branch carved in the dark-green overlay, all against the bubble-suffused ground, glass stopper

Provenance: A private American collection.
The Meriem Collection; Christie's New York, 19 March 2008, lot 305.
Ruth and Carl Barron Collection, Belmont, Massachusetts, no. 4782.

Notes: The unusual combination of colors on this bottle is enhanced by the impeccable carving and well-composed design. It belongs to a group of overlay bottles that exhibit a variety of colors of overlay spread around the bottle, linked by a common color, as seen here in the green overlay stems and foliage. Another rare bottle from this group from the Ruth and Carl Barron Collection Part I, decorated with a green basket containing four-color blooms on a pink glass ground, was sold at Christie’s New York, 16 September 2015, lot 248. Two others from this group are illustrated by M. Hughes inThe Blair Bequest, Chinese Snuff Bottles from the Princeton University Art Museum, Baltimore, 2002, pp. 151-152, nos. 189-91. 

Christie's. THE RUTH AND CARL BARRON COLLECTION OF FINE CHINESE SNUFF BOTTLES: PART II, 16 March 2016, New York, Rockefeller Plaza