Asianart.com | Associations | Articles | Exhibitions | Galleries

Inherited quite a few snuff bottles collected by my grandmother over many decades. It's really difficult to tell what they are made of, how old they are and also whether they are original or replicas. Sharing a few here. Would love to hear about what to look for.

Sorry, for some reason the photos didn't upload the first time. Here they are.

The first two pictures look to be molded resin snuff bottles. See discussion at link below.

The 3rd picture looks like 3 glass snuff bottles. To my eye, they look pretty new.

Cheers,
Stan

URL Title :Resin Snuff Bottles

The ones shapes like fruits and veggies I cannot tell if they are glass or stone. Here are some more

The "Peking" glass one with the dragon looks pretty decent. The last one looks like resin again.

Cheers,
Stan

Thanks so much again. There is so much to learn just to figure out what these are made of! The dragon is one of my favorites from her collection. I thought it might be glass, and it has a very interesting spoon compared to the others and has this writing on it. "吉羊" Though, I cannot read it.

Without pictures, it is hard to same a lot. Generally, very few snuff bottles have the artist signature on them. The exception is inside painted snuff bottles which are often signed. Often times snuff bottles will have a reign mark on the bottom. These are more often apocryphal than not and provide little clue to the bottles actual age (other than it was created after the reign mark).

If you search this forum on "snuff bottle" and read some of the past discussions, you'll get the idea of how hard it is to date snuff bottles.

The link below, discusses a few of ours.

Cheers,
Stan

URL Title :Snuff Bottles

Thank you I tried - and messed up posting photos 3 times. I just resized and posted them earlier today and am hoping they will finally post. Hope you can see them soon and thanks for the info you've already provided! :)

Hi Stan, It looks like my photos have finally posted! :) Thank you for any insight you can provide!

Asianart.com | Associations | Articles | Exhibitions | Galleries |