Chinese bottles are up to snuff

The Chinese snuff bottle, used to hold powdered tobacco, is the result of global trade that first began when Europeans were exposed to the plant following Christopher Columbus’ 1492 voyage to the Americas. Maritime routes of the Portuguese and Spanish through Asia in the 16th and 17th centuries led to tobacco’s popularity in China, where imperial courts "snuffed" tobacco through the nose rather than smoked it.

As a result, the receptacle became a popular gift among the elite classes and a canvas for sumptuous Chinese art. Bottles were made of everything from glass and porcelain to precious metal and semiprecious stones.

The Honolulu Academy of Arts is exhibiting nearly 200 bottles in "Interior Landscapes: The Art of the Chinese Snuff Bottle" through Oct. 31.

"It made perfect sense that Asians became exposed to tobacco because Europeans used it for medicinal purposes, and one of the medicines taken on the voyages was snuff," says Shawn Eichman, the academy’s curator of Asian art. "In China the popular way to store medicine was in little ceramic jarlets. Over time the shape of the bottle shifted to suit fine powder. The bottles got finer and thinner over time, and they had an airtight lid with an ivory spatula."

"Snuff bottles were specific to China. In Europe, metal snuff boxes were used instead, making the bottles a uniquely Chinese art form.

EICHMAN DEEMS the bottles in the academy exhibit "world class." The pieces are organized by material, including porcelain, glass, agate, amber, rock crystal, semiprecious stones and jade.

The show was organized in conjunction with the International Chinese Snuff Bottle Society convention that will meet in Hawaii in October. A foremost collector of the art form, Y.F. Yang, loaned his collection to the academy for the exhibit. Yang’s bottles supplement the academy’s own collection, donated by Joanna Lau Sullivan.

"Interior Landscapes" focuses particularly on inside-painted bottles, which were produced from the 18th to 19th centuries.

"The bottles in the show are made of very high-quality rock crystal. They’re so clear, so flawless, they look like glass," says Eichman. "Designs were carved inside the bottle. The inside surface would be roughened so that paint would stick to it, and then artists would use tiny bamboo brushes to paint landscapes or figures in one or two inches’ worth of space — all in reverse."

Yang’s collection includes rare bottles from the 1820s, which was right at the start of inside painting. What makes them even rarer is their mint condition.

Most surviving inside-painted bottles bear a brown tinge, and paintings are often ruined by exposure to snuff. Yang’s pieces were treated as artwork rather than receptacles.

A bonus in the exhibit are loans from Sullivan of three commissioned snuff bottles painted with Hawaiian subjects. One has a depiction of Diamond Head on one side and the King Kamehameha statue on the other, Eichman says.