Snuff bottle with bapo design

Snuff bottles were used to store powdered tobacco. The habit of sniffing tobacco, imported from Europe, was believed to cure headaches and other illnesses. On one side of this snuff bottle is bapo imagery, composed of a fan, painting, calligraphy, seal, and portraiture. On the other side is a copy of a famous calligraphy entitled Jiu cheng gong li quan ming (A Well Named Sweet Water in Jiucheng Palace) which was carved on a memorial stele in the Tang dynasty. A signature of Ma Shaoxuan is written at the end of the calligraphy on the lower left, above the seal. Ma Shaoxuan was one of the most celebrated snuff-bottle artists of the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries, and this piece is a copy after his style.