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This bottle is part of a small collection an older couple I know own, they came from China during the 1940s.
I have been looking for days on the internet and can't find anything remotely similar.
It's heavy and seems to be molded bronze. About 2.5 inches high.
Can anyone help with dating? Rarity?

This appears to be a Tibetan brass or bronze bottle with cap embellished in coral, turquoise and other stones. This style is meant to be worn like a necklace. You'll find others in the archives of liveauctioneers.com (just search "Tibet snuff"), though most seen in recent auctions don't appear to have the kind of authentic age this one exhibits.

The mottled red bottle in the background, in case you aren't already aware, is a coveted type of bottle made of "realgar" glass (or "realgar" style glass), which by the original formula got its color from an arsenic sulfide mineral called "Ruby Sulphur".

Best regards,

Bill H.

Thanks Bill H.
Your information is very much appreciated. I was not sure about the orange and yellow bottle. Snuff bottles are way beyond anything I'm familiar with. I'm doing a favor for a nice old couple in my small community.
Can I show you more? There are nine pieces.

I'm not a real authority on snuffs either but helped appraise a collection of around 50 bottles for auction recently, which experience left me more a dilettante than anything else. If you can post the rest of the pix here, I'll comment where possible, while hoping others can fill in the gaps and offer corrections.

Best regards,

Bill H.

Thanks Bill H.
My humble attitude towards knowledge about these topics is: 'the more you know, the less you know...'
What I felt was valuable in this small snuff bottle collection is not and what I thought was ordinary might turn out to be great.
I will post more snuffs for you and the board's perusal, and do appreciate the fact that you could be spending your spare time on other things.
regards, lisa

Lisa, I'll have to work these in between some other chores I have coming up. The inscription on the inside-painted bottle in the top picture has a signature of Ma Shaoxuan (馬少宣). Ma (B 1869 - D 1939) was a well known snuff bottle artist and subject of a book shown at the following link to the International Chinese Snuff Bottle Society website:

http://www.snuffbottle.org/zh_hant/books/inside-painted-snuff-bottle-artist-ma-shaoxuan-(1869-1939),-a-biography-and-study.aspx

I'm not a member myself, but I've seen the Society commended by others in the forum as a good place to lodge queries about bottles. You might find help there in determining whether this bottle is consistent with Wang's style and body of work.

More later,

Bill H.

The second photo down shows a snuff bottle carved of wood (boxwood perhaps?) in the form of a millet head sheathed by twisted stalks and curling leaves of the lotus, which begin on the body and also form the cap. A very interesting piece symbolically, as millet, a cereal (禾 - he) and the lotus (荷 - he) lend a homonymic meaning of "Harmony" to the bottle, as in the He He Er Xian (和合二仙) or two Daoist Immortals of Harmony.

I've not seen another bottle like it and would guess this one may be at least of the late 19th century and probably rare.

Best regards,

Bill H.

Best regards,

Bill H.

I did try to identify the wood like material and based it on the texture and marks of the wood. I came up with similar Chinese carved pieces made of bamboo root, with those small dark circular inclusions, and the fine dark striations on the top's leaf stems.
The body looked like a carved pod to me, a milk weed pod for instance, which is edible and has similar leafage. I will check the millet and see what you mean.
I have looked up your other information. The two inside glass painted bottles do have the MA SHAOXUAN signature but the art work is very different than his usual style. The pair of small glass bottles seem to have two plain humorous scenes, a man sitting astride a horse backwards standing in water, and a woman trying to pluck a live bird of some kind.
The sites you suggested mention several artists may have used MA's signature, some emulating him, or some related to him.
This little collection may turn out to be special, I hope so for the owners. best regards, lisa

here are three images, first two are the fronts of the pair of the MA S. signed bottles.
Last one is another MA S. sold at auction for a fair amount in the last 2 years a bottle with a red seal dating it 1917.
Now that I have a closer look, these could be genuine. The bottles are quite small, hard to see the detail of the painting and figures, which has also deteriorated over time, I think. The date seal is hard to decipher as well.
regards.

In the bottom photo, the bottle on the right side appears to be agate with a natural brownish inclusion. When the inclusion is more green in color, the bottle is called "moss agate". Darker inclusions such as this might also be carved when they lend themselves to some sort of imagery, in which case they are called "silhouette agate" or "shadow agate" bottles. The cap on this one appears to be coral.

The lobed porcelain bottle at left in the same photo also looks to have a coral cap and famille rose decoration of "Fu, Lu & Shou", the three Daoist "Star Gods". Here the God of Longevity, Shouxing, is seen on the right side paying respects to Fuxing, the God of Good Fortune and Happiness. Out of sight on the other side should be "Luxing", the God of Prosperity and Home Life, who often holds a child in his arms. He's the one Scholars and Bureaucrats would entreat to provide promotions and male heirs.

Both of these bottles should appeal to Chinese bidders at auction.

Best regards,

Bill H.

Thank you Bill H. for the added information, I am printing those for my friends, making a package for them to document the collection and what they have.
I was on Bonham's site last night and got more useful detailed information about dating etc. from their old sales.
The pale agate bottle with brown inclusion is plain, yet very attractive. Seems overall every bottle is quite a bit older than we thought, which is good news.
Appreciate your input very much, especially since you were kind enough to pursue this, and no one else did. Best regards, lisa

I thought a note was in order to make sure everyone realized how my previous comments dated Mar 11 addressed the last photo posted by Lisa on Mar 06.

The photos of the inside-painted snuff bottles show them to be in a good traditional style. The animal with a rider in the stream actually is a water buffalo, which animal's care & feeding traditionally fell to the youngest son in a farm family. All of these scenes show glimpses of typical daily family life and activities, so should make the bottles appealing at auction. The last bottle has a cyclical date of the "Summer of the Ding Si Year" (Ding si xia ri) before the Ma Shaoxuan signature. This would be 1917 in the context of Ma's career and 1977 in the case of a subsequent imitator.

Best regards,

Bill H.

Just a postscript: When I squint my eyes and cant my head a bit, that inclusion in the shadow agate bottle bears a passing resemblance to a group of three or four foo dogs kicking up dust at play. Either that or the bottle is acting like a viewing stone should.

Cheers,

Bill H.

Bill, another postscript you deserve to know. With your help and all the information you took the time to provide me and my elderly friends, I was able to form a general opinion about this old bottle collection and correspond with Bonhams.
They are interested, and we are in the initial process of evaluation-estimate-paperwork.
Hope your kindness and generosity comes back to you 10 fold. Best wishes, lisa

I discovered... that the red seal is the maker's mark, which is also in script above it, I assumed it was the date.
Andacht has a page with Chinese characters for various years for snuff bottles. This was really helpful in recognizing some dates on some bottles but not all, as the way the date is explained in the Chinese script is not always the same.
I also wanted to point out that none of these bottles are marked in any way, except the small painted ones. Regards, lisa

Again, your information is so very much appreciated. Dating is an important factor as the story behind this collection is a multi-generational one.
The elderly couple that live in my small town know nothing about how to value or sell this collection.
I'm doing them a favor helping them to proceed, with no money involved.
The husband is the nephew of Dr. Jean (Millar) Kilborn, who was the daughter in law of Dr. Retta Kilborn, a Canadian protestant missionary who worked with her husband Dr. Omar Kilborn from late 19th century to 1933 at the West China Union University in Chengdu, a hospital and college facility at that time.
As the owners have very little information about how these bottles were acquired, only that they were brought back to Canada during the 1940s, I am wondering if some of them belonged to the older Kilborns.
This matters as you understand I'm sure. I will follow your advice and check the other source of information.

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