ESOTERIC COLLECTING

Fig. 8. BO(tle with proper stopper. Fig. 9. Amethyst bubble. This is an improvement, but not ideal (fig. 7). Any neck that flares sharply and has a narrow lip is most comfortable with a stopper that immediately recurves to bal– ance this. We have that here, al– though not, perhaps the ideal shape, but the calor is perhaps a little strident and takes attention away from the subtlety of tl,e blue– green jade. After tlying many options, I fi– nally came up with this one which, to my eye, is a vast i.lTIprovement (fig. 8). The sharp inward CUlve of the collar balances the flared neck ideally, tl,e pearl, while being pre– cious and bright is not demanding since it is almost colorless, leaving the emphasis of color to the collar where the jadeite-green is comple– mentary both in calor and material, since it appears to be a closely re– lated stone, although, in fact, it is a glass imitation I had specially made, but that doesn't matter. Shape and calor are what matter here. The use of tl,e emerald-green collar although not necessarily an obvious dloice, emphasizes the blueness of the jade which, pre– sumably, was part of its appeal. Now, our aesthetic reject from a minor sale has become a rather im– posing work of art. We have added meaning, and we have, of course, added value in all the ways J men– tioned previously. None of this was far below the surface, but it was below the surface and it has taken a little creative effort to uncover it and give it its due as an Impe.rial work of a'rt. . The basic tool of esoteric collect– ing is research. Research into spe– cific bottles, materials, symbolism, mythology, schools of calving, style and much more. Given a creative collector, a single bottle can lead to the discovery of an immense wealth of cultural meaning. Many of us cannot access a great deal of the material we would like to access ei– ther because we don't read Chinese or because even if we do, the doc– uments are nO( readily accessible to us, as is the case with the Imperial Archives, but today more and more of the original source material is being translated and there is now a wealth of material available which was undreamed of in Lilla Perry's day. Indeed, the Society has been responsible for a good deal of this wealth of new material through its use of the Education Fund over the years and it is a source provided by the Society tl,at is responsible for revealing a little hidden meaning in this bottle (fig. 9), It is a pebble of amethyst, al– though, of course, ametllyst is not usually found in pebble form and it was probably calved into this shape from a larger crystal. It is carved Witll two chi c1ragons, those delightful, lizard-like dragons that were a staple of Courtly production during the Qing dynasty and tllis may indicate an Imperial prove- 10 nance. What lifts this bottle into a far more intriguing class than either its material or subject matter, how– ever, is tlle incredibly imaginative use of a natural bubble of air con– tained in water trapped in an elon– gated fissure in the stone. This is air, bear in mind, that comes from millions of years ago, trapped like an ant in amber long before hu– mans evolved to rely upon it. It has been brilliantly used as tl,e flaming pearl between the two dragons. As the bottle is tipped, it runs along the fissure from one beast to the other, like tl,e bubble in a spirit level. These trapped bubbles are not UnC01111UOn in geology, and I have seen three or four pieces of material, mostly agate, from China with this similar geological freak, but can recall no other snuff bottle. One of the ways to add meaning is to link objects with documemaly material. if you have a painting by a minor Renaissance artist and you can find a reference to it in Papal papers as having been ordered for tl,e ·Pope's sister as a birthday pres– ent on a particular date, the mean– ing of the physical work of art is immensely enhanced. That is the case here to some extent, although there is no evidence that this partiC– ular bottle is being referred to. Zhao Zhiqian wrote the earliest complete book on snuff bottles in the 1860s and the Society commis– sioned Professor Richard Lynn to translate it and the various com-