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Hi.

Could anyone help me please with a translation or identification / age of this snuff bottle.

Thanks a lot :)

I believe your snuff bottle is cloisonne and an example dating to late Qing period early republic period (1900-1920?).
I like the stylised heads along with the three toed dragon with a Phoenix chasing a pearl. The dragon representing the emporer. The Phoenix repressing the empress. The flaming pearl represents knowledge. Hence the dragon (emporer) achieves possession of the pearl of knowledge and thus becomes a good ruler in Confucius terms.
I am unable to read the marks at the base. But I am sure others will.
Mark@imperial

Characters on the side,
福寿康寧　-　Good fortune, long life, health and peace
Marking at the base,
年制　　-　Made in the Year of - the left side is missing with the actual indication of reign or era
name. Besides of this, the marking does have two more suspicious points;
1, The "年制" (Made in the Year of) normally does come to the left side and the era name to the right side. However, there are examples of this in the post-1948 language use.
2, the "制" character before 1948 was written in the traditional form "製"

With regards,
I.Nagy

That's very helpful thank you!

It is a very nice piece. I have uploaded some more photos from different angles to show some more features.

The snuff bottle may date s few years into the early 1900s, but the silvery metal cladding probably is no older than mid-20th century. A variety of these "vintage" clad wares of various forms, often dirtied artificially to look antique, as seen here, pop up fairly frequently in the forum. Please see the embedded link with image and another entered at the end of my post for copying into your browser. The B&W teapot in the linked embedded image took a lot of soaking and more scrubbing with a toothbrush for me to get past the artificial grime. Most of these clad items seem to use fairly recent transfer-decorated Chinese porcelain, though cloisonné wares like your snuff bottle aren't suitable for transfer decoration as far as I know.

I Nagy's admonition about the post-1948 simplified "Made/制" character on the base of your of your bottle should be taken to heart.

Best regards,

Bill H.

http://www.asianart.com/phpforum/index.php?method=detailAll&Id=96217



URL Title :Metal-clad teapot

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