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Subject:Re: Help with snuff bottles?
Posted By: Stan Wed, Mar 28, 2012
I guess we'll have to leave the turquoise one unknown. Unless there is a simple test I can do.
Ernest, our resident jade expert, told me in a private email conversation that the dark green one was maw-sit-sit. I didn't realize that that color is rare or valuable. I liked it because it is nicely carved. Now, I like it more!
Below is the other side of the maw-sit-sit bottle. Again, since I had the camera out, I threw in a couple of more bottles. There is a purple jade one - a modern carving (Ernest informed me) of a stork in a pine tree and a deer in the foreground. Below them are a couple of crappy maw-sit-sit bottles. I expect they are modern carvings.
We have quite a number of porcelain, bone, ivory, and composite bottles. We struck up a friendship with a couple of associate curators from the Peabody Essex Museum and one day went into the storage building and went through the snuff bottles and Japanese woodblock prints. I had hoped the husband, the Chinese art associate curator, would be able to tell me what was crap and what was gold. Regrettably, his knowledge was no better than mine. The PEM does have a porcelain bottle that is a dead ringer for the dragon/phoenix one you liked.
Cheers,
Stan
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