Saturday 29 May 2010

Snuff Bottle Up Date,

they have finally come to auction, the George and Mary Bloch collection of snuff bottles went under the hammer, this little beauty going for 9,280,000 Hong Kong dollars — £821,383 the entire collection of 140 bottles, made £5.8million — smashing the pre-sale estimate of £1.8million. I first featured these bottles on the blog some time ago here, but if you do not want to follow the link basically Mr Bloch was a German Jew, born in Vienna, and educated in England whose family fled Austria for China in 1938, in fear of persecution from the Nazis, and he settled in Shanghai, it was there he and his wife started collecting the bottles, the bottles, which range between one and four inches high and date mainly from the 17th and 18th centuries, come with small spoons, snuff became popular in China during the early 17th century and because of the warm climate it was kept in air tight bottles — unlike in Britain where boxes were suitable, now why did my family not think of collecting them?

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