PROVENANCE:
Acquired from Sydney L. Moss Ltd., London 28th July 1967 Christie's London, 14th May 2013, Lot 15

The cylindrical body finely worked in reticulation with a continuous landscape scene featuring three sages strolling amongst pavilion, pine trees and rockwork, one of the old man adorned in long flowing robes holding a peach, the other depicted carrying a basket of wild herbs, one hand holding a walking stick and the other a stem of lingzhi, the third with a peach in his right hand and a long leafy stem issuing a finger citron, all framed within thick circular ends with pierced shou characters encircled by two bats in flight amidst clouds and bordered by keyfret scrolls, the stone of pale green with russet tones, the ends of dark green hue.

Jade parfumiers creates in the Qianlong era are preserved in a number of museum and private collections, but it is rare to find a white jade parfumier with the covers worked from spinach jade. For similar examples of jade parfumiers preserved in the Palace Museum, Beijing, see a pair of reticulated jade parfumiers, decorated with an intricate landscape in openwork with overlapping layers of rocks, illustrated in Yang Boda, Collections of Chinese Jade , Hebei, 1991, p.556, pl.84. See also an example illustrated by Knight, Li and Bartholomew, Chinese Jades: Ming Dynasty to Early Twentieth Century From the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco , San Francisco, 2007, p.307, pl.353.