Three white jade snuff bottles @ Bonhams

A white jade snuff bottle 白玉茄形鼻煙壺 19th Century 十九世紀. photo courtesy Bonhams

Fashioned in the form of a slender eggplant with overlapping leaves of dark green to the top, en suite dark green jade stopper in the shape of a crooked stem. 3in (7.6cm) high. Sold for $13,420 inclusive of Buyer's Premium

Provenance 來源: Chris Randall

Exhibited 展出: Gallery of New South Wales,
Sydney, Australia, 1991
Chinese Culture Center, San Francisco, July, 2000

Illustrated 出版圖片: Hidden Treasures of the Dragon (1991), cat. no. 150

The Chinese eggplant (qiezi) is thought to resemble the shape of a face wearing a cap. Due to this likeness, the eggplant has become associated with officials wearing formal headdress. To bestow an eggplant-shaped object to someone was to give them the wish for an official position. For further discussion, see Fang, Symbols and Rebuses in Chinese Art, (2004) p. 16.

A white jade snuff bottle 白玉蟬形鼻煙壺 Qianlong Period 乾隆. photo courtesy Bonhams

Fashioned as a resting cicada, subtlely rendered from the icy white stone with finely incised details, coral branch stopper. 2 3/4in (6.8cm) high. Sold for $7,930 inclusive of Buyer's Premium

Exhibited 展出: Chinese Culture Center, San Francisco, July, 2000

The cicada is a traditional symbol of immortality. For the scholar gentry, a jade cicada became the symbol for an honest man of principle. See Bartholomew, Hidden Meanings in Chinese Art (2006), p. 178.

A white jade snuff bottle 白玉瓜形鼻煙壺 1770-1850. photo courtesy Bonhams

Fashioned as a large gourd issuing from a leafy vine surmounted by a small bat, the opposite side with a playful troop of three monkeys climbing up towards the top, malachite branch-form stopper. 2 1/2in (6.2cm) high. Sold for $4,880 inclusive of Buyer's Premium

Provenance 來源: Robert Kleiner, purchased February, 2005

Bonhams. Fine Snuff Bottles from the Collection of Margaret Polak, 24 Mar 2010. 580 Madison Avenue, New York www.bonhams.com