according to susan stewart in on longing: “in the final phases of late capitalism, history itself appears as a commodity” and collections become a “paradise of consumption.”

snuff bottles were inherently made to be collected, initially solely by the qing emperors, and then members of the elite, ie he shen who had 2000 snuff bottles in his home at the time of his arrest on bribery charges, on par with the scale of an emperor’s collection. later, mary & george bloch, collecting in the 1980s, amassed a close 1,740bottles.  

some numbers

here is some interesting trivia on the demographics of snuff bottle collectors. in the international chinese snuff bottle society (founded in 1968 in baltimore as the chinese snuff bottle society of america, by edward choate o’dell): of 360 members, only 70 are from mainland china. 

as the chinese art market grows and buyers from mainland china enter the picture, the market for snuff bottles actually decreases (chinese buyers main interest: paintings + ceramics)

of the approximately 2000 bottles that enter the american market yearly, there are more bottles on the market than can be absorbed, driving down the prices.

there is the idea that the snuff bottle market is ‘understimated’ by mainland china buyers, and the expectation that more attention from chinese collectors and auctioneers could cause an upward trend in sales. 

international chinese snuff bottle society journal covers: consistent aesthetic from the 80s (left, middle) to autumn 2021 (right)

gene sawyer, a red cross staff member in china during the last year of wwii, made a hobby of searching for snuff bottles. her american currency could buy almost anything she saw and wanted, from a chinese population likely desperately in need of cash. however, the one bottle she couldn't obtain via cash transaction is the only one she still remembers: “with time, all this is fading and chinese snuff bottles have lost their allure. today i rarely think of them, but if i do, i see the tantalizing beauty of a gold stone bottle in a little shop in shanghai – never possessed but mine in memory”* 

stewart writes that “time is not something to be restored to an orgin; rather all time is made simultaneous or synchronous within the collection’s world,” especially true for the world inside the collector’s cabinet at the entry to the thomson european collection and also true of the tradition of cabinets of curiosity. if collection is an economy, infinity is a threat, and objects are aesthetic forms of measureless emptiness, can we as viewers of snuff bottles maybe bring something to the table ourselves, separate from history and capital? maybe, in addition?