China, 1750-1850. Well hollowed with a small mouth, finely carved in relief to one side with a monkey seated next to a craggy rock, pointing with one raised hand towards a butterfly flying above, and to the other with a grazing horse.

Provenance: From the private collection of Dr. Mary Kaufman, New York, USA. Thence by descent within the same family. Dr. Kaufman (1927-2013) was a well known NYC snuff bottle collector.
Condition: Excellent condition with minor wear. The stone with natural fissures, some of which may have developed into small hairline cracks over time.

Stopper: Coral stopper carved as a clambering chilong, gilt metal collar.
Weight: 102.0 g
Dimensions: Height including stopper 63 mm. Diameter neck 19 mm and mouth 6 mm

Monkeys are a popular subject partly because of their meaning in various rebuses, but also because of their longevity symbolism. The depiction of a monkey on a horse’s back for example represents the rebus ‘Ma shang feng hou’, which may be translated as ‘May you receive a swift promotion to a high rank of office’. The butterfly is likewise a symbol of longevity and appears in rebuses because the character ‘die’ is homophonous to another character meaning ’70 to 80 years of age’.

This is one of the best from a group of early sapphire snuff bottles, several of which are of related form (see literature comparison). The color of the stone is extraordinary for so large a piece, deep, dense and vibrant, all equally spread throughout the bottle. Even the pattern of matrix and paler clouds, which inevitably run through a sapphire pebble of this size, are attractive and fascinating as texture.

Harder than jadeite to work, and being a precious material and translucent, sapphire is almost never extensively hollowed, although this particular bottle is reasonably well hollowed, even by jadeite standards for the range of bottles of this general shape. A test reveals a Mohs hardness of 7-8 for the matrix areas and clearly above 8 (and some even above 9) for the purer areas. The hollowing is also achieved through a relatively small mouth, a common feature of the oval bottles in sapphire, ruby or jadeite which may offer a further clue to dating. In 1888, Zhang Yishu wrote some supplementary remarks to Zhao Zhiqian's Yonglu xianjie (see Richard John Lynn's translation, JICSBS Summer, 1995, p. 18). He comments that originally the size of a snuff bottle mouth might exceed 12 mm, but that later this changed so they would not exceed 6 mm. He puts no date on this change, but if we look to hardstone bottles with mouths of 6 mm or less for further information, it would seem that by the Qianlong period, and particularly the second half, the smaller mouth was already well established.

Sapphire and ruby were among the stones classified by the court as 'precious' along with pearls, jadeite, cat's eye and diamonds, while the 'semi-precious' materials were tourmaline, nephrite, amethyst, amber, turquoise, lapis lazuli, coral, quartz, agate, seashells, and others (according to Guoli Gugong bowuyuan 1986, p. 30). The same source informs us that on court belts, the use of ruby and sapphire was reserved for the emperor (p. 31). However, this does not mean that the materials were generally restricted to the emperor, since the hat-finial of the first rank of civil or military officials was also of ruby.

Both sapphire and ruby are of the corundum family and consist of crystals of aluminum oxide. If chromium ions replace the original crystal's aluminum, the result is ruby. The Chinese might have had supplies from Kashmir, famous for its deep cornflower-blue sapphires, but the most likely source on a regular basis would have been Magok in Burma, where mining for both sapphire and ruby had been carried out since the late sixteenth century. This source would certainly have supplied the court after the normalization of relations in 1784 ended a protracted period of hostilities between the two countries, although illicit trade would have been sporadic before that date. This event played a large role in the subsequent massive popularity of jadeite, which became well established as a precious stone only in the last decades of the eighteenth century (see Moss, Graham, and Tsang 1993, no. 60) and it seems likely that this group of early sapphire and ruby bottles, which so resemble their many jadeite counterparts, date from the same mid-Qing period and were probably made for the court. Burmese sapphire is characteristically quite heavily flawed, as is the ruby, but this is of little help in a snuff-bottle context where all material large enough to form a snuff bottle is going to be flawed. Another possible source was Thailand, where darker blue sapphires were found in quantity.

There is, of course, no such thing as a gem-quality sapphire snuff bottle. Any stone imported to the Qing court that was of sufficient size for a snuff bottle would never have been hollowed out if it was flawless enough to be valuable as a gemstone, for hollowing would have recklessly destroyed its depth of color. The ruby or sapphire material used for larger-scale carvings in China – and snuff bottles were 'larger scale' for gem materials – was always heavily flawed. What is unusual here is that the flaws are pleasingly even and consist mostly of a fabric of thin grayish-white and distinct iron-red lines. Additionally, the inclusions and shadings to the stone have been skillfully incorporated into the depiction of the craggy rockwork and surely also played a role in determining the horse’s pose.

Literature comparison: For the Count Blucher ruby, see Moss, 1971a, no. 103, and for the Beatty example, Chapman 1988 p. 61, fig. 9, where fig. 10 is a related plain sapphire. Another plain, early sapphire bottle similar to this is illustrated in Hamilton 1977, p. 55 no. S–58, and one of a different shape in Ford 1982, no. 58. Another, with mask handles and a band of lappets around the base, was offered by Sotheby's, Hong Kong, 28 October 1992, lot 422, while an old, fruit-form sapphire bottle is illustrated by Stevens 1976, no. 632, where a range of green jadeite bottles of an ovoid form similar to that of the majority of sapphire and ruby examples is also shown (nos. 438–441 and 449).

Auction result comparison: Compare with a related but smaller sapphire snuff bottle with a gold collar, dated to 1700-1820, at Bonhams Hong Kong, in Fine Chinese Art, on 28 November 2011, lot 48, sold for HKD 524,000, and a closely related sapphire snuff bottle, dated 1770-1850, at Bonhams Hong Kong, in Snuff Bottles from the Mary and George Bloch Collection Part I, on 28 May 2010, lot 13, sold for HKD 780,000.

清代藍寶石鼻烟壺, 或爲御制
中國，1750-1850年。掏膛良好，小嘴，一面雕刻一隻猴子站在岩石上手指蝴蝶，另一面雕刻著一匹馬。

來源：美國紐約Mary Kaufman博士私人收藏，之後傳承於同一家族。Kaufman博士(1927-2013)是一位紐約知名鼻烟壺收藏家。
品相：狀況極好，輕微磨損。藍寶石内天然裂紋，一些可能會隨著時間的流逝發展成細髮絲綫裂紋

壺蓋：螭龍紋珊瑚蓋，鎏金金屬蓋托
重量：102.0 克
尺寸：總高63 毫米；頸部直徑19 毫米；嘴部直徑6 毫米

拍賣結果比較：一件相似但更小的藍寶石鼻烟壺，金托，1700-1820年見香港邦瀚斯Fine Chinese Art拍場2011年11月28日 lot 48, 售價HKD 524,000；另一件相近藍寶石鼻烟壺, 1770-1850年見香港邦瀚斯 Snuff Bottles from the Mary and George Bloch Collection Part I拍場2010年5月28日 lot 13, 售價HKD 780,000.