Ever since the snuff bottles became a collector’s item outside of China, it has suffered from a common misconception.  Its small size and obvious functionality have led to the impression that it doesn’t rank very highly within the broader context of Chinese Art.  The truth is quite different.

Snuff is finely powdered tobacco and snuffing just another way of inhaling nicotine, which is, of course, highly addictive.  When the Manchu’s conquered China in 1644, establishing the Qing dynasty, they were already familiar with tobacco.  They considered, with remarkable foresight, that smoking it was harmful but thought snuff was beneficial.  This belief in the efficacy of snuff in clearing the mind and even preventing a number of unpleasant diseases was sustained throughout the dynasty, leading to widespread addiction to nicotine at all levels of Chinese society.

What constitutes high art in any culture is defined by an influential minority which, in China consisted mainly of the Imperial family and others elevated to the aristocracy by them, and the literati, the scholar-class who ran the civil service and themselves produced the most respected art in the culture in the form of paintings, calligraphy, music, poetry and carvings of various sorts on a small scale.   It was precisely these people who were the most addicted to snuff, so when it came to creating the small containers to hold their narcotic delight, they imbued them with a very high level of artistic content.  The vast resources of one of what was one of the most powerful and wealthiest nations on earth at the time were devoted to the production of art on a massive scale, and among this production the snuff bottle figured prominently.

At first this patronage, radiating outwards from the Manchu Court, involved production at various Imperial workshops on a grand scale and to the highest standards possible.  The Court was patron, and hired the finest craftsmen from all over China and, indeed, through Jesuit missionaries who flocked to China to proselytise, beyond.  Designs would be drawn up by Court artists, approved by the Emperor, and produced at various Imperial Facilities.  The results, in their thousands year by year, were distributed as gifts from the Court to nobles and officials, or between nobles and officials, and gradually spread the Courtly arts among the people.  In response, officials from all over China sought out and patronized the finest of local craftsmen and artists to produce snuff bottles to be presented to the Emperor and his family, also in large quantities each year on various festivals and birthdays.  Wherever the bottles themselves were made and under whatever circumstances, they represented the aesthetic of the influential minority at a very high level and were, therefore, among the high arts.

There is another misconception to be overcome in judging Chinese Art and that is that aesthetic theory, like fine wine, does not necessarily travel well.  Because monumental sculpture is considered a worthy vehicle for high artistic expression in the West, it does not necessarily mean that it is equally so in the East.  Because small, functional objects are not generally considered as high art in the West, we have made the mistake of assuming that the same would be true in China.  It is not. Chinese aesthetes traditionally ignored monumental religious sculpture as art, producing it and responding to it only as a convenient insurance policy with the Gods. Buddhist sculpture, Tang horses and other burial sculpture were never collected by the traditional Chinese aesthete. They concentrated on small, intimate works of art made by and for the influential minority.  Art that could be held in the hand, among which was the snuff bottle. In Qing China, if a collector wanted to show off a religious sculpture, it might be a small soapstone, bamboo, or wood figure, it would never have been a life-sized marble sculpture, but he would be far more likely to entertain his fellow aesthetes by passing round his latest exquisite snuff bottles. 

The possibilities of becoming further involved in the art of their beloved snuff bottles was not long in dawning on the literati.  By the third quarter of the eighteenth century, the Emperor himself was writing poems to be inscribed on favourite snuff bottles, and the scholar class followed suit.  It was not long before these aesthetes decided that writing a poem and having someone else inscribe it was missing out on some of the potential.  They began to adopt certain materials where they could inscribe them or even decorated them personally without unseemly industry.  Bamboo, coconut-shell and other organic materials which could be worked directly with the ‘iron-brush’ of the skilled seal-carver offered ideal surfaces for direct pictorial, calligraphic and poetic expression.  At sometime around 1800, the literati discovered another potential medium for their highest expression: the inside surface of transparent crystal and glass snuff bottles.  The inside-painted snuff bottle seems to have been invented among the nobility at Court during the mid-Qing period and was quickly taken up by other scholar-artists living in the South as a viable, and intriguing alternative surface to paper and silk.  Throughout the nineteenth century many of the literati produced their own snuff bottles as art, adding to the wealth of Imperial production, a quieter, more restrained and more personal art form, one that suited their aesthetic of intimacy.  The high arts of China were never considered as something that one would gaze at in large crowds, they were always intended as intensely personal, intimate, meditational aids.  During the Qing dynasty, from 1644 to 1911, the snuff bottle evolved to and maintained its status as a potential vehicle for high art, prompting the production on a massive scale of some of the finest little works of art the culture ever produced.