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| Interior Painting in Snuff Bottles |
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Interior Painting in Snuff Bottles (Biyanhu Neihua) Snuff bottles
are not native to China but were reportedly introduced from the
West by Matteo Ricci, an Italian Jesuit father who worked in Beijing
in the early 17th century. Yet the art of interior painting in snuff
bottles was born and developed in China and unique to the country.
A popular story tells of how the art originated. In the Qing
Oynasty, an official addicted to snuff stopped on his way at a
small temple for a rest. When he took out his crystal snuff bottle
to take a sniff, he found it was already empty. He then scraped
off a little of the powder that had stuck on the interior wall
of the bottle by means of a slender bamboo stick, thus leaving
lines on the inside visible through the transparent wall. A young
monk saw him at this and hit upon the idea of making pictures
inside the bottle. Thus a new art was born.
The "painting brush" of the snuff bottle artist today
is not very different from what the official in the story used
at the beginning. It is a slender bamboo stick, not much thicker
but much longer than a match, with the tip shaped like a fine-pointed
hook. Dipped in coloured ink and thrust inside the bottle, the
hooked tip is employed to paint on the interior surfaces of the
walls, following the will of the painter.
The art became perfected and flourished towards the end of the
Qing Dynasty at the turn of the century. Curio dealers began to
offer good prices to collect them for a profit.
Snuff bottles are small in size, no more than 6-7 cm high and
4-5 cm wide, yet the accomplished artist can produce on the limited
space of the internal surfaces any subject on the whole gamut
of traditional Chinese painting-human portraits, landscapes, flowers
and birds-and calligraphy. Liu Shouben, a celebrated contemporary
master in this field, succeeded in painting all 108 heroes and
heroines of the classical novel Water Margin, each with his or
her characteristic expression, all inside of one single bottle!
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