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Hello all,

Attached is a pair of inside painted snuff bottles. I realize things like this are made today and available in any Chinese trinket shop (and our local museum gift shop).

My question is: How do you tell the good ones? Are these old? Are these possibly rock crystal? One does have an inscription. What does it mean?

Any information is appreciated.

Thank you,
Stan

And here are a couple of Peking glass examples with lion head handles.

Kindly check the stoppers. The green "jade" stopper looks like glass. With a good loupe you should be able to see tiny air bubbles (glass), and the indication that the material is poured, which makes it very new.
Maybe someone else is able to tell you something about rock crystal.
Ernest

The stoppers may not be original. Stoppers come and stoppers go. I never judge a bottle by the stopper.

That said, both stoppers in the first set of pictures appear to be stone (internal cracks and inclusions). Upon close examination of the surface of both bottles through a magnifying glass, they appear to have fine lines (most running circumferentially) as if they were worked. The edges of the base also appear to have been sanded to shape. I can't see any small bubbles with a magnifying glass but the rough inner surface makes it difficult. I think I see small black inclusions. I need better magnification.

Assuming the Peking glass ones (above) wouldn't have such lines, I examined them. They both show distinct lines, especially in the mouth of the lion head handle. Possibly from cutting away the outer colored glass?

So, I looked at a rose quartz one and the small lines follow the carving of the design. I (gingerly) tried to use a sharp edge of the rose quartz one to scratch the bottom of above bottles. I don't think it scratched but I didn't want to apply too much force.

I think I better buy a loupe. And a quartz crystal for hardness testing.

Thanks,
Stan

Another thing comes to mind, Rock crystal = carved... glass = poured. Those two bottles look poured. The stopper could be plastic.
Ernest

Dear Stan ,
I know next to nothing about Chinese Painting and even less about snuff bottles; but a couple of things jump out at me as soon as I look at the four bottles.
Firstly the painting quality of the first bottle with the gold fish is pretty awful.
The two fish are rendered in exactly the same manner the only difference being the colour. Their eyes pop out at you like cartoon characters. This suggests to me that the painter is following a "mechanical" formula instead of rendering the fish individually as a genuine artist would do.
Secondly the pallette of the first two bottles is very similar, the main vairiation being the different proportions of the colours used. This suggests that they have come from the same factory and I use the word factory insead of workshop deliberately.
Similarly the second two bottles have an uncannily similar form although of different size. Once again the colour pallette is almost the same with a variation in the different proportions of the colours used.
Whenever I see objects that are supposed to be old and presumably widely dispersed appearing in multiples, unless I know them to have been carefully collected and so juxtaposed, I immediately become suspicious.
As I said earlier I know nothing about painting or snuff bottles; but would deduce them to be modern.
Phillip Adams.

Since I've been asking a lot of questions here, I'll impart some small amount of knowledge about snuff bottles. From "Chinese Snuff Bottles - The Adventures & Studies of a Collector" by Lilla Perry I gather that, while originally thought to be older, inside painted snuff bottles were popular in the half century bracketing 1900. Thus, new and old are not that far apart and all are fairly "modern."

Ragards,
Stan

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