Description
Brown crystal; supported on a foot rim with unded edges, the smoky-coloured material very well hollowed.
Brown, or smoky crystal was almost as popular as colourless crystal in the arts of the snuff bottle and was clearly favored by the Qianlong Emperor. A bottle in the Bloch collection is inscribed with an Imperial poem dated 1774 (Treasury 2, no 353) and the court connection is further strengthened by another inscribed smoky crystal bottle from that collection which belonged to Prince Ding Zaichuan and is inscribed with his hall mark, Xingyoulheng Tang (ibid.,no, 3611).
The visual interest in this bottle resides in the unusually slender variation on the standard rectangular form of the Qing period.
