Two Chinese sapphire-blue aventurine-glass snuff bottles, 18/19th C.

H.: 7,5 - 5,8 cm

Ref.: Sotheby's, Snuff Bottles from the Mary & George Bloch Collection, Part IX, Nov. 24, 2014, Hong Kong, lot 60, for another example of this type. (Sold HKD 15.000) (link) Interestingly, it is noted here that: 'This bottle represents a group in which fragments of aventurine glass are rolled into the surface of a contrasting colour. For more on aventurine glass, see Sale 4, lot 59. The Chinese terms for this material are jinxing boli 金星玻璃 (‘golden-star glass’) and wendulina 溫都里那 (or 文都里那).Nothing about this bottle would preclude a date from the first half of the eighteenth century. The simple form could have been made at any time, but the blue glass here is as suffused with air bubbles as any piece known of this colour and also contains some impurities, as if the type might still have been at an experimental stage when it was produced.' The bottles in the current lot also consist of blue suffused glass, so they may well hail from the same workshop and/or period.