Collecting, Identifying And Maintaining Snuff-Bottles

Posted by slang on September 8, 2009

Experts advocate the following on the:-

Collecting of snuff bottle:

1. The Shape of the snuff bottle should be shapely and sightly. The snuff bottle’s shoulders can be compared to “Beauty’s shoulders”. So its line must be elegant, and charming.
2. As usual, the snuff bottle should have intact its caps and little spoon to make it original.
3. The Color of the snuff bottle should be bright.
4. Integrity:- The snuff bottle needs intact without shatter or fade.
5. Carve technique:-It need has a fine and aesthetic feeling.
6. Paint technique:- It need be fine and neatness, also has a certain art characteristic.
7. Bottle wall:- Its outer wall need level off and smooth, it also has high transparency, and has no sand eye and veins.

How to Identify Snuff-bottles::

Zhao Ruzhen, a connoissueur of Qing Dynasty in his book “ Appreciate The Snuff Bottle” advise the following two points on collecting curio:

• Identify its genuineness or fake
• Identify whether it is classy or plain or inferior

According to him, the normal method for curio’s appreciation is to identify its genuineness, after that only to identify whether it is classy or not.
However, for collecting snuff bottle, he advise the need to look at its classiness before identifying its genuineness. This is because for snuff bottle’s rareness, one only see its material, painting and is not able to see which period it was made and its artists name.
A superb snuff bottle is one where the material is rare and the paint technique is superb. On the contrary, if the snuff bottle material is common, and paint technique is common, even if it was made during Kangxi and Yongzheng Period, it has not much a value.

How to maintain snuff-bottle:

Experts advocates the following on the maintaining of rare snuff bottles:

1. Remember that all snuff bottles cannot stand strong sunlight hence put it into glass counter, etc
2. Note that jade snuff bottle fears sweat and alkali.
3. Do not rinse or clean the snuff bottle with any chemical detergent. You should wipe it with soft white cloth after appreciating it.
4. Do not taint it whether when spraying insecticides,etc
5. Pine stone snuff bottle should not be placed near lampblack or steam as they are quite delicate materials. Also avoid high temperature, otherwise the pine-stone snuff bottle will change its color.

Related posts:

1. Snuff Bottles & Gemstones
2. Classification And Identification of Jadeite

Comments

One Response to “Collecting, Identifying And Maintaining Snuff-Bottles”

1. George Ingraham says:

   July 29, 2011 at 3:28 am

   Tried to find a contact link within your blog but no luck..

   Would like very much to be able and send you an email about your snuff bottle blog entries.

   Could you use my attached email address. Then I can reply to that it.

   Look forward to hearing back from you..