A blue and white and pale underglaze copper-red porcelain 'book-form' snuff bottle
1800-1900
Of cylindrical form modelled as a rolled book with numbered pages and opened to a scene of four figures in a canopied raft near bare-branched trees, depicting the the 'Red-Cliff Visit', with a descriptive poetic inscription on the facing page, the shoulder incised with a birds-eye view of the page leaves, the deeply cut base mirroring the shape.
2 5/8in (6.6cm) high, stopper
Footnotes:
1800-1900年 青花詩文人物鼻煙壺

This snuff bottle playfully takes the form of an open traditional string bound book, with an illustration and a page of text visible. The picture relates to Su Dongpo's (1036-1101) famed journey to the Red Cliff, which shared the name of a site of a crucial battle in the year 208, during the Han dynasty. Su Dongpo chronicled his journey in two poetic masterpieces, and his journey to the Red Cliff was recreated in paintings and other media for centuries to follow.

The text page is a poetic ode to Su Dongpo's journey and reads:

Five hundred years ago they continued their outing here,
The water's reflection according to the ancients joined with the floating sky;
Tonight the moon waivers behind eastern mountain,
Like that autumn of the renxu year [1082].

The same poem appears on a Yongzheng period tall blue and white porcelain cup sold in our London rooms, 8 November 2012, lot 45.

For an enameled example that depicts a single figure in a canopied boat, rather than the group of scholarly figures, see Michael C. Hughes, The Chester Beatty Library, Dublin, Chinese Snuff Bottles, Baltimore, 2009, pp.300-301, no. 234.