S83 A “Handy” fossiliferous shell reefs limestone snuff bottle

Description

Description:  Chinese fossiliferous limestone snuff bottle of rounded, flattened squared form. The overall rounded shaping of this bottle, especially considering that the base is simply highlighted by an incision all around, thus not protruding, is making it suited for an easy handling, especially for being carried in the pouch. The nature of the fossiliferous limestones is explained in the Notes here below. In this case, brick color parts and light grey color parts are cemented with ivory color filling, yielding a delicate visual tone.

Foot/base:  Rounded, not protruding base.

Mark:

Dating:  The overall great patina, the inner deposits of use, the making of the inner iron tube, and the overall shaping are pointing toward an earlier bottle. Thus, we would suggest a 18th or early 19th century dating.

Material:  Fossiliferous limestone

Size:  65 mm high

Stopper:  Aventurine goldstone stopper with bamboo spoon.

Provenance:  Antiquarian market.

References:

Notes:  Fossiliferous limestones are the result of a process that takes millions of years to be developed. There are many types of fossiliferous limestones, depending from the nature of the original organisms and the related environment. In the case of this bottle, we consider that it is a reef coral fossil cemented by sediments of micro quartz siliceous and that the creamy white seems to be residue of fossil coral and other living organisms. It is worth to note that the outer rim of the mouth of this bottle and of our fossiliferous limestone bottle S12 is rounded, as is the overall shape of them. This should be to prevent excessive wear and cracks due to the softness of the limestone; there is in fact a metal reinforcement inside the mouth of this bottle, as there are as well on our puddingstone bottles S39 and S42. This is proven by the fact that the mouth of the fossiliferous limestone S12, which does not have the metal tube insert, is chipped. This bottle is deserving a further note: it is not a high-quality bottle for sure, but together with other examples in our collection, it is a typical example of one of the types of snuff bottles that we appreciate very much. The reason is that they have two great features, one being the shape, that is functional, perfect for the purposed use, without useless additions; in other words, what today is called as “objects of design”. And the fact that they were designed for being used, and they HAVE BEEN intensely used.