IMPERIAL, PALACE WORKSHOPS, BEIJING, 1750-1800

Hugh Moss translates the inscription as follows: “Moreover, between heaven and Earth everything has its rightful master. If a certain thing does not belong to me, I would never take away even a speck of it. Yet, as to the refrehing breeze over the streams, it becomes transformed into music when entering one’s ears. [The same is true with] the clear moon over the hills, which changes into an ice view when one casts one’s eyes on it. There is no limit to our partaking of such …” (Moss et al., The Art of the Chinese Snuff Bottle, The J & J Collection, vol. II, New York, 1993, p. 584)

Another white-glass snuff bottle inscribed with a poem, likely by the same hand and with a Qianlong seal mark on the base, is illustrated by H. Moss et al in A Treasury of Chinese Snuff Bottles: The Mary and George Bloch Collection, vol. 5, Part 2, Hong Kong, 2002, pp. 426-28, no. 871 (now in The Water, Pine and Stone Retreat Collection of Snuff Bottles, no. 34.2.1763), where the authors note a group of snuff bottles with lobed bodies created in the second half of the Qianlong reign. Examples are also known in agate, as well as in solid blocks of glass made to imitate aquamarine.