Studio: international art (8.1896)

Chinese Snuff Bottles

any for particular notice, but not the least remark-
able are those which have been modelled in relief
(Fig. 16), those which are pierced with marvellous
intricacies (Figs. 18 and 19), and those which are
ornamented with incised patterns below the glaze.

But if on glass and porcelain Chinese artists are
only on an equality with their brethren all the
world over, in their manipulation of the hard stones
they may claim an indisputable supremacy. It is
perhaps not a matter for much boasting, consisting
as it does, in the main, of a persistency and perse-,
verance in overcoming the hardness of an intract-
able material, coupled with an absolute disregard of
the value of time ; but in these hurry-scurry, shoddy
days, these qualities may well elicit an admiration
in many minds, which is not to be wondered at, if
perhaps hardly deserved. Expenditure of labour
upon an article which will last for all time is
excusable ; nor must it be forgotten that to a China-
man, whose aim in art is above everything else
sensuous, a surface delightful to the touch, of a
colour pleasant to the eye, afforded him an
amount of gratification which the Westerns can
hardly appreciate.

The stones which have been most in repute are
rock crystal, amethyst, carnelian (a cherry red in-
fused with orange yellow), chalcedony of a milky
white, cloudy colour with azure tints ; heliotrope of
a deep green sown with red points, chrysoprase,
sardonyx of warm, red tones; tourmaline, malachite,
azurite, amber, mocha, and all kinds of agate.

As M. Paleoloque, Secretary to the Chinese
Embassy in Paris (to whose writings I am indebted
for much information on Chinese Art), says : " All

these stones imposed upon the craftsman, even to
a greater extent than jade, an endless patience and
a prodigious amount of ingenuity. At every hour
of his work he was liable to freaks or flaws in his
material opening up under the blows of his tool.
Was the stratification regular? Would the piece
he was extracting come away readily, or would it
detach with it a part that was necessary for his
design ? At any moment he might, owing to this,
have to change a plan upon which he had been
working for months. He has perchance started
with the idea of using certain markings and repre-
senting a peach and a leaf attached to a stalk : a
flaw occurs, and he has to change it into a bursting
pomegranate; six months later, when his work is
nearly finished, certain red tones arrest his tool;
these he has to use for something, and he may
have to remodel all his fruit, utilising these as pro-
jecting branches.

"Such conditions of work lend themselves un-
doubtedly to happy results and a freedom of com-
positions which are attained in few other materials."

The bottles on page 12 aptly illustrate the fore-
going. Fig. 4 is mocha stone, in which the form
of the deposit has been adapted to a design of
an eagle seizing a pig. Fig. 3 is also of mocha, in
which a layer of manganese has been utilised to
cut out the figures of a monkey on a horse
attached to a post, whilst in Fig. 2 a deposit
caused by an evaporation of water charged with
manganese in chalcedony has been left, as its form
resembles a fungus.

Lastly, we come to the material which is most
affected and prized by the Chinese in the manu-

FIG. 9. — CAMEO GLASS

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FIG. IO.

—CAMEO GLASS

FIG. II. AGATE