57 - A YIXING THREE COLOUR STONEWARE SNUFF BOTTLE SHAO SHEDA, 1810-1880

A YIXING THREE COLOUR STONEWARE SNUFF BOTTLE SHAO SHEDA, 1810-1880 To Be Sold Without Reserve Of flattened quatrefoil shape, with a long, slightly flaring neck, each main side with a quatrefoil panel in the paler colour with a central, raised, red taotie head and ring handle, the narrow sides with a single bat beneath a shoulder and neck decoration of formalized shou characters, the base around the outer foot rim with a band of impressed formalized petal motifs, with an oval cartouche bearing the seal Sheda to one side, the signature of the artist Height: 7cm Provenance: Michael Hughes, New York, October 2001 Hugh Moss (HK) Ltd, 7th November 2001, (a copy of the original invoice available) This unique Yixing bottle is made up of segments of three different clays, allowing for an unusual cameo effect where the details of mask and ring handles and bats and shou characters appear. It is also of a rare form for Yixing snuff bottles The potter, whose name does not, as far as we know occur on other snuff bottles, is Shao Sheda, a potter recorded by K. S. Lo in The Stoneware of Yixing from the Ming Period to the Present Day, Hong Kong University Press, 1986, in the index of potters, as being active in the nineteenth century Ω This Lot was imported from outside of the UK, under the Temporary Admission regime 5% import VAT will be charged on the ‘hammer” and 20% VAT will be charged on the ‘buyer’s premium