26 
House & Garden 
THE TREASURED SNUFF BOTTLES of the CELESTIALS 
The Almost Universal Use of Tobacco and Medicine Among the Chinese Produced 
a Vast Number and Variety of Bottles that now Serve to Interest Collectors 
GARDNER TEALL 
Photographs by Jessie Tarbox Beals, Inc., and by courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and H. E. Bauer, Esq. 
F IFTEEN hundred years ago there lived a 
Chinese painter, Wu Tao-tzu, famous in 
Celestial lore, of whom it was said that it 
seemed as if a god possessed him and wielded 
the brush in his hand. 
This greatest of all Chinese masters was 
held in high esteem by the Emperor. One day, 
wishing to possess a landscape of one of his 
favorite bits of scenery, the Emperor directed 
Wu Tao-tzu to go forth and paint it. In the 
evening Wu Tao-tzu returned, but empty- 
handed. 
“Why,” exclaimed the Emperor, “where is 
the landscape? You have nothing!” 
“O august serenity, Son of Heaven!" re¬ 
plied V. u Tao-tzu, “I have it all, all the land¬ 
scape, here in my heart.” 
Perhaps he made some discreet concession to 
the material side of the adventure, for straight¬ 
way he proceeded to cover a wall of one of the 
apartments in the palace with a marvellous 
scene, such a one as he had spent the day in 
contemplating. 
The next morning it was finished. De¬ 
lighted, the Emperor came to view it. “Ah,” 
said he, “wonderful, wonderful! It is the 
river, the bamboo and there those 
majestic rocks!” 
At the word, Wu Tao-tzu 
clapped his hands, and lo! there 
in the rocks of the picture a cav¬ 
ern appeared. Wu Tao-tzu 
stepped into it, the entrance 
closed and Wu Tao-tzu disap¬ 
peared from earth. 
Surely no legend better illus¬ 
trates the Chinest point of view, 
that a painting is the home of the 
painter’s soul. 
Crystal bottle from the C’hien Lung 
Period (A. D. 1736-1796), with the 
contemporary girdle tassel. Altman 
Collection 
The Crystal Bottle 
This is the story that was told 
to me one day when, happening 
into a Chinese shop where some 
antiques and curios were offered 
for sale, I chanced to pick up a 
tiny bottle. It was not over 2 l / 2 " 
high. Its weight proclaimed it 
crystal. A miniature scene and 
inscription were skilfully and 
beautifully painted inside. 
“That,” said the intelligent 
Chinese attendant, in answer to 
my question, “is little bit paint¬ 
ing. Story one man artist man 
Jade bottle from 
Bishop Collection 
Horse and rider 
decoration in jade 
Carved jade from 
Bishop Collection 
The colored jade 
veins are carved 
Mottled agate 
with jade stopper 
verv much great. Him name Wu Tao-tzu.” 
Then he told me the story, a golden nail on 
which to hang a bottle! Surely enough, there 
was depicted Wu Tao-tzu entering the cavern. 
The inscription vouched for the incident. 
“But what a tiny bottle. What was it used 
for?” 
And the Celestial Said— 
“Much little bottle China old time fine like 
this. More other bottle kinds use snuff for, 
medicine for. Look yes you please.” 
The Celestial showed me how the ivory 
“spoon,” running the depth of the bottle and 
fastened in the coral stopper, was manipulated 
to fetch forth portions of anything a vial of 
this sort might contain. In snuff taking the 
“spoon” was emptied on the thumb nail and 
the “sniff” deftly taken. That was my intro¬ 
duction to the fact that snuff-taking in the 
Orient had fostered a fashion that produced 
objects of vertu fully as interesting, certainly 
more curious and as beautiful as the snuff¬ 
boxes affected by the Europeans of the 17th 
and of the 18 th Centuries. 
After this is it any wonder that the collec¬ 
tor’s instinct should have led me 
to be enthusiastic about Chinese 
snuff-bottles as a field for brows¬ 
ing? And soon I found that the 
fascination of these little objets 
d’art had exerted no small influ¬ 
ence on other collectors. 
Fine snuff-bottles were not to 
be found at every turning. Never¬ 
theless they were not so rare as 
one might imagine, although as 
with any other class of art objects 
supreme examples were difficult 
to obtain at any price. If China 
has a population of 400,000,000 
souls it must not be assumed that 
her craftsmen have produced any¬ 
thing like 400,000,000 snuff-bot¬ 
tles. True it is that men, women 
and children of China smoke, but 
they do not all take snuff. 
How Bottles Were Used 
Nearly all of these bottles that 
we see in collections are snuff- 
bottles, though many of them were 
undoubtedly used for medicines, 
as the Chinese were great medi¬ 
cine consumers. They used them 
Jade bottle in 
Bishop Collection 
Pink and yel¬ 
Ivory bottle 
Porcelain u r n 
Agate, porce¬ 
P l u m shaped 
Cloissonne with 
Colored glaze, 
Agate. All these 
low carved 
and stopper. 
with painted 
lain stopper. 
snuff bottle of 
lotus flower de¬ 
coral and tur¬ 
from Bauer 
glass bottle 
Ming dynasty 
decorations 
C’hien Lung 
cornelian 
signs 
quoise stopper 
Collection 
