Exhibition archive - Chinese Snuff Bottles - Norton Museum of Art - West Palm Beach Florida

Chinese Snuff Bottles
9/6/1997 - 11/16/1997

The unique art form of snuff bottles are featured in the exhibition "Chinese Snuff Bottles", September 6 through November 16th at the Norton Museum of Art. Over 100 snuff bottles drawn exclusively from Florida collectors will be on display.

Snuff first came to Asia in the late sixteenth century via a circuitous route from the Americas. All scientists and scholars agree that tobacco was indigenous to the Central American region and, after Columbus, made its way to Europe where the French fashioned the elegant snuff box. Very soon thereafter, the Chinese adapted a preexisting medicine bottle to hold powdered snuff or ground tobacco. Thus, the art of making snuff bottles of every known material, carved and decorated, reached an apex of creativity in the late eighteenth century.

From that time on, some Chinese and Westerners collected these miniature masterpieces for the beauty of the object rather than as a dispenser of snuff. During the nineteenth century, snuff was used so widely in the Chinese population that literally millions of bottles existed. Snuff taking is no longer a common related to the communist revolution in China. After 1949, the communist revolution in China put an end to the practical need for snuff containers by outlawing the substance as a decadent habit of the Qing dynasty. Today, bottles are only made by artists for the tourist and/or collector trade. The bottles on exhibit at the Norton Museum of Art represent a cross selection of precious materials including jade, semi-precious stones, ivory, lacquer, and amber as well as metal bottles and the largest category in sheer numbers, glass and porcelain.

The Norton Museum of Art is a major cultural attraction in Florida.
The Museum is internationally known for its distinguished permanent collection featuring
19th and 20th century European and American art, Chinese, contemporary art and photography.
From its founding the Norton has been famous for its masterpieces of 19th century and 20th century painting
and sculpture by European artists such as Brancusi, Gauguin, Matisse, Miró, Monet, Picasso
and by Americans such as Davis, Hassam, Hopper, Manship, O'Keeffe, Pollock and Sheeler.
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