Weiner Mihályné szerk.: Az Iparművészeti Múzeum Évkönyvei 9. (Budapest, 1966)

HOPP FERENC MÚZEUM — MUSÉE FERENC HOPP - Polonyi, Péter: Some Inside-Painted Chinese Snuff Bottles

snuff which the proprietor always carried with himself; the hand or the palm plays an important role in its handling ; the bottle often presents itself to the eves of the proprietor or his friends and acquaintances. As a result of all this, the bottle had to be of small dimensions, easy to hold and show well. Although snuff bottles have been made also of metal, carved red lacquer and embossed porcelain, all of the above specified requirements could be met mainly by bottles made of semi-precious stones or glass, with a plain surface, easy to hold and to clean. Since the agreeable touch and constant friction did not permit superficial painting, the patterns appeared obviously on the inside of the bottle. The concurrence of this requirement and of the aforementioned technical conditions resulted in the creation of the inside-painted snuff bottles.

12 Even in the first half of our century it is characteristic of the situation of Chinese applied arts research that a branch of art born and developing practically under the very eyes of the collectors, with its works signed and dated (though mostly with the relative dates of the cycle only), was esteemed by half a century's literature to be earlier by one and a half century. Since the only known Chinese work on snuff bottles, the „Pi yen ts'ung-k'o" containing four writings (dated from 1869, 1861, 1892 and 1902), fails to mention insidepainted snuff bottles,

13 the above-mentioned paper of Huish, referring to them briefly and publishing the photos of two objects (including a bottle made by Chou Lo-yüan dating from 1889 according to the actual scope of our knowledge), must be considered as the first written record on inside-painted snuff bottles in the whole world. Huish does not deal with the question of dating, but subsequently, until 1948, it was a generally accepted view that this branch of art reaches back as far as the 18th century; this opinion is reflected by the introductions written to catalogues of collections and exhibitions (even Laufer puts them to the beginning of the 19th century),

14 and such dates are figuring in the comprehensive works of Curtis and Hitt too.

15 We do not know the exact text of the letter written by Professor N. C. Shen of Peking to the latter,

16 but the effect of his attitude seems to indicate that he was the first to call the attention to these misdatings, and it was the first time when it was ascertained that most of the inside-painted snuff bottles were made about the turning of the -century. The scientific elaboration of several hundred inside-painted snuff bottles to be found in major Western collections is due to Schuyler Cammann who has discovered in the collection Wolferz a piece made by Ma Shao-hsüan and marked with the year Kuang-hsü; this helped him to work out in 1953 the precise chronology of dated snuff bottles. In his papers published in 1957 he •discusses the activity of the most important artists already according to the different stages of development ; the large number of inside-painted snuff bottles preserved in American and West European collections offered him the opportunity to these studies. Since, in the elaboration of the material of our museum, 12 It is another question that this new art of a spectacular technique has outlived the habit itself of taking snuff. 13 Cammann HJAS p. 295 foot-note 1. 14 Berthold Laufer : Catalogue of a Collection of Ancient Chinese Snuff Bottles in the possession of Mrs. George T. Smith (Chicago, 1913). J5 Matoon M. Curtis: The Story of Snuff and Snuff Boxes (New York, 1935), p. 95.; Henry C. Hitt: Old Chinese Snuff Bottles (Bremerton, Washington, 1943), pp. 31. and 32. 16 Perry • op. cit. pp. 133 —135; our conclusions are drawn from these statements.