C2 A Yixing “Double happiness for wedding” snuff bottle

Description

Description: Chinese Yixing bottle of cylindrical shape, with flat shoulders and narrow cylindrical neck. Decorated with a known motif: a magpie pierced on a prunus tree emerging from bamboo leaves, and another magpie on fly, all on a blue background. The base glazed in green, unglazed foot. The motif is known as Zhu Mei Shuang Xi(竹梅双喜). Two magpies flying among the bamboo and plum trees. Magpie was regarded as a herald of good news, and the first Chinese character of “magpie(喜鹊)” is “喜” which means “happiness”, so two magpies mean double happiness. Bamboo and plum blossom symbolize a boy and a girl playing together during their childhood (it’s a famous saying coming from a poem of Li bai in Tang Dynasty). So this combination symbolizes “A boy and a girl were playing together when they were children, and they become a perfect couple when they are growing up”. Another interpretation says that plum and bamboo stay for bride and groom respectively, hence the meaning symbolizes “Double happiness for the bride and groom”. We have the same exact motif also on a Yixing teapot, see last picture. It is the teapot Y7 in the Yixing section of the Chinese ceramics collection.

Mark:

Dating: 1800 – 1860

Material: Yixing ware

Size: 79 mm

Stopper: Mother of pearl with bone spoon

Provenance: Ex Carlo Cottarelli Collection, Milano, Italy. Bought directly from him.

References: See auctioned Christie’s and Bonhams examples in the last picture.

Notes: The following is a sort of “Adventures in collecting Chinese ceramics and snuff bottles”. Years ago, I bought at a street market a bunch of Auction’s catalogs related to Chinese Art, from the major Auction houses. All from the seventies, and from Auctions held in London, NY City and Hong Kong. There were hand written hammer prices on them, so I thought that the previous owner assisted personally at the auctions. Luckily, in one of the catalogs there was a telegram (are them still used today?) with the name of the sender and the recipient. Then, after some searches and telephone callings, I finally found the collector. When I met the late Carlo Cottarelli in 2005, he was about 90 years old; at that time he had already sold the great part of his collection through the major Auction houses. He was a wealthy person and his collection had quite important items, which he bought with the assistance of Prof. Romagnoli. We become friends and he sold me all the rest of his collection. Some of the best items are no more in this collection. Later, in 2013, he sold me his collection of 80 snuff bottles. I was not collecting them at that time, so I did re-sell all them through Auction houses and to some friends. Among those sent to the Auction houses, some were not sold and did come back. I decided then to keep them and started collecting snuff bottles.

The items here coming from the Cottarelli collection are: snuff bottles C2, C3, C4, G1, G2, G3, G4, G5, G6, G7, G8, M1, O1, O2, S1, the ceramics B4, B10, W15, W21, W28, J12, J13, Y7, QP23, R14, K22 and the Tang bronze mirror V4.