A FINE JADEITE 'BUTTERFLY AND MELON VINE' SNUFF BOTTLE

Late 18th/early 19th century

Footnotes

十八世紀晚期/十九世紀早期 翡翠雕瓜瓞紋鼻煙壺

Provenance:
Yamanaka & Co. Ltd., London
E. A. Parry (1879-1946), London, acquired from the above on 8 October 1923, and thence by descent

來源：
倫敦古董商山中商會
倫敦E. A. Parry（1879-1946）舊藏，於1923年10月8日購自上者，並由後人保存迄今


Yamanaka Sadajiro (1866-1936) opened the London branch in 1900, and by 1923, when the present snuff bottle was sold to Parry, also had branches in Osaka, New York, Boston, Beijing and Shanghai.

The wish for ceaseless generations of descendants, guadie mianmian 瓜瓞綿綿, which the combination of butterflies and melons invokes, appears to have originated from the 'Book of Odes', compiled between the 11th and the 7th century BC. The verses contained in this anthology make abundant use of plant and animal analogies to describe female beauty and human accomplishments. Butterflies die 蝶 are a homophone with the character making up the word for little gourds die 瓞, symbolic of fertility because of the multitude of their seeds.

Compare with a related jadeite snuff bottle, Qing dynasty, but carved with designs of chilong, which was sold at Christie's Hong Kong, 8 October 2020, lot 43.

1900年，山中定次郎開設倫敦分店；至本例入藏的1923年，山中商會已於大阪、紐約、波士頓、北京及上海等地設立了多個分店。

本例通身雕飾瓜蝶紋，寓意「瓜瓞綿綿」；典出《詩經·大雅·綿》，「綿綿瓜瓞，民之初生，自土沮漆」，原意指周朝開國的歷史如瓜瓞般歲歲相繼不絕。蝶，諧音「瓞」，即小瓜，瓜始生時略小，但其蔓不絕，逐漸長大，綿延滋長。瓜瓞綿延遂成為子孫昌盛、多子多福之象徵。

香港佳士得於2020年10月8日售出一例清翠玉雕螭龍紋鼻煙壺，拍品編號43，形制相若，可為比對。