FIFTEEN hundred years ago there lived a Chinese painter, Wu Tao-tzu, famous in Celestial lore, of whom it was said that it seemed as if a god possessed him and wielded the brush in his hand. This greatest of all Chinese masters was held in high esteem by the emperor. One day, wishing to possess a landscape of one of his favorite bits of scenery, the emperor directed Wu Tao-tzu to go forth and paint it. In the evening Wu Tao-tzu returned, but empty-handed.

“Why!” exclaimed the emperor; “where is the landscape? You have nothing!”

“O august Serenity, Son of Heaven!” replied Wu Tao-tzu, “I have it all, all the landscape, here in my heart.”

Perhaps he made some discreet concession to the material side of the adventure, for straightway he proceeded to cover a wall of one of the apartments in the palace with a marvelous scene, such as the one he had spent the day in contemplating. The next morning it was finished. Delighted, the emperor came to view it. “Ah,” said he, “wonderful, wonderful! It is the river, the bamboo, and there those majestic rocks!”

At the word, Wu Tao-tzu clapped his hands, and lo! there in the rocks of the picture a cavern appeared. Wu Tao-tzu stepped into it, the entrance closed, and Wu Tao-tzu disappeared from earth. Surely no legend better illustrates the Chinese point of view, that a painting is the home of the painter’s soul.

That is the story which was told to me one day when, happening into a Chinese shop where some antiques and curios were offered for sale, I chanced to pick up a tiny bottle. It was not over two and a half inches high. Its weight proclaimed it crystal. A miniature scene and inscription were skilfully and beautifully painted inside.

“This,” said the intelligent Chinese attendant, in answer to my question, “is little bit painting. Story one man artist man very much great. Him name Wu Tao-tzu.”

Then he told me the story, a golden nail on which to hang a bottle! Surely enough, there was depicted Wu Tao-tzu entering the cavern. The inscription vouched for the incident.

“But what a tiny bottle! What was it used for?”

“Much little bottle China old time fine like this. More other bottle kinds use snuff for, medicine for. Look yes you please.”

The Celestial showed me how the ivory “spoon,” running the depth of the bottle and fastened in the coral stopper, was manipulated to fetch forth portions of anything a vial of this sort might contain. In snuff-taking the “spoon” was emptied on the thumb nail and the “sniff” deftly taken. That was my introduction to the fact that snuff-taking in the Orient had fostered a fashion that produced objects of virtue fully as interesting and beautiful as, and certainly more curious than the snuff-boxes affected by the Europeans of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

After this is it any wonder that the collector’s instinct should have led me to be enthusiastic about Chinese snuff-bottles as a field for browsing? And soon I found that the fascination of these little objects of art had exerted no small influence on other collectors.

Fine snuff-bottles were not to be found at every turning. Nevertheless they were not so rare as one might imagine, although, as with any other class of art objects, supreme examples were difficult to obtain at any price. If China has a population of four hundred million souls it must not be assumed that her craftsmen have produced anything like four hundred million snuff-bottles. True it is that men, women, and children of China smoke, but they do not all take snuff.

Nearly all of these bottles that we see in collections are, perhaps, snuff-bottles, though many of them were used for medicines, as the Chinese were great medicine-consumers. They used medicines when well—which was most of the time—in diminutive doses, perhaps as charms, and when ill in quantities that would amaze and frighten us. Hecate and her witches never prepared caldron more terrific than the Chinese physician of yesterday devised for his certainly suffering patient. The famous materia medica of herbal which Li Shi-chin spent thirty years in preparing, a work published in 1590, contained over eighteen hundred prescriptions dear to the heart, though I fear disastrous to the well-being of the Chinese invalid pro-tem. Gallon containers would not have sufficed for some of these prescriptions, while others—the least virulent, and therefore to be toyed with—were harbored in the tiny bottles that snuff was, later, to usurp.

Miniature Chinese bottles found in Egypt and in Asia Minor—bottles of porcelain bearing inscriptions in Chinese from the Chinese poets—show that in the tenth century communication already existed between the extreme boundaries of Asia. Arabs traded at Canton and Hangchow to the end of the Sung dynasty, 1279. These little bottles were probably used by the Arabs for kohl, the black substance with which they painted their eyelashes. Sixty years before Li Shi-chin’s herbal—“Pun tsao” was its title—tobacco was introduced into China, and before long tobacco as snuff became popular and fashionable.

Among the ornamental articles of Chinese adornment, says an authority on eastern costume, in none do they go to so much expense and style as in the snuff-bottle, which is often carved from stone, amber, agate, and other rare minerals with most exquisite taste. Jade, of course, was most precious of all and often imitated in glass, as were topaz, amethyst, tourmaline, amber, and other stones and substances.

Collectors in Europe and America are beginning to realize what interesting things in the way of snuff-bottles the Chinese glass-worker produced.

All Occidental methods of glass-working have long been known to the Chinese. They have proved themselves skilful with blown, pressed, and molded glass. However, their fame as glass-workers rests chiefly with their cutting, deep chiseling, and undercutting objects of glass. In this respect they have not been surpassed. Their work in this field was undoubtedly inspired by their wide and varied experience with glyptic work, a field in which their accomplishments in fashioning jade and other hard stones served them a good turn.

As glass presented a somewhat less resisting mass than that of nephrite, jadeite, or rock crystal, the Chinese lapidary found in it ready response to his craftsmanship. The carved glass objects of the Chinese usually are small. They generally suggest by skilful coloring and tinting the hard stones they imitate. The Chinese snuff-bottles are especially remarkable in this respect, as they are also in the marvelous fertility of invention bestowed on their decoration, though in form they are nearly of one general type and do not vary greatly in size. From the plain crystalline glass bottles decorated with landscape or figure subjects (by deftly painting the interior walls of the bottle so that the scene shows through) to the much-bejeweled bottles, all these gems of Chinese fabrication are triumphs of the art, patience, and ingenuity of the Oriental hand and mind.

It is interesting to note that the Chinese have never made claim to the discovery of glass. The historical work, “Wei Luo,” based on third-century records, chronicles that ten colors of opaque glass were imported by the Chinese from Rome between the years 221 and 264. The Chinese themselves did not learn the art of glass-making until the fifth century.

The fine porcelain snuff-bottles of the Celestials are indeed things to be treasured. We find them in endless colors and designs. Some are plain, some with under-glaze decoration, some cased with pierced porcelain casing, others with molded decoration, and still others with painted decoration. Occasionally one finds a porcelain bottle whose glaze intentionally simulates glass.

The Chinese are skilful lapidaries. Their work in shaping jade and other hard stones has not been surpassed. The Celestial craftsman likewise shows great ingenuity in taking advantage of any irregularity in form or color of the stone he is working. The various quartzes are worked by the Chinese on the same treadle bench which they use in fashioning jade, and they work quartz stones along the same general lines.

A study of Chinese snuff-bottles will indicate the unlimited range in the decoration, form, etc., of these objects. It will be seen, however, that they are all nearly of a size dictated by general convenience in carrying in pockets and pouches. The stoppers of these Chinese snuff-bottles are scarcely less beautiful in many instances than the bottles themselves. As a general rule the stoppers are of material more precious than that used for the bottle. Pearls and precious stones are less often employed, and I have never seen a Chinese snuff-bottle stopper inset with diamonds. The diamond is a stone the Chinese have never appeared to regard highly except for its utilitarian possibilities. Coral is a favorite for the snuff-bottle stoppers. Ivory is not uncommon for stoppers, but fine ivory snuff-bottles are very rare, as likewise are fine cloisonnÉ enamel bottles.

There is no gainsaying that Chinese snuff-bottles cannot fail to attract the collector by reason of their esthetic interest. At the same time, few objects open up a more interesting intellectual treat than is afforded by a study of these tiny bottles in respect to the subject of their decoration. Colors, too, are to be studied. Five colors enter popular Chinese tradition: black, white—the Chinese regard these as colors—blue, yellow, and red, to each of which is attached definite symbolism. Colors are, for instance, associated with the points of the compass—black with north, red with south, blue with east, and white with west. Yellow is the color associated with the earth, and so on.

Surely the treasured snuff-bottles of the Celestials offer the collector much that is intellectually delectable; and as really interesting specimens are not beyond the moderate purse, their enjoyment does not necessitate the sacrifices that might deter the collector since these little objects of art are not as hopelessly out of reach as were the grapes to Tantalus!