The bottle is of flattened, rounded form with a flat lip and recessed, oval base. The clear class is heavily suffused with small bubbles and has a single, ruby-red transparent overlay, finely carved on either side with a continuous design of a pond, with two lotus blooms and a lotus leaf on one side and an egret wading amidst foliage and a lotus seed pod on the other side. Jadeite stopper.

A scene of a single egret and lotus plant with seed pod is a rebus for the wish 'yilu lianke' (‘May you pass your exams all the way’). This wish was expressed when someone had to pass the highly important series of civil service examinations.

A comparable example, but in blue overlay, is illustrated in Sotheby’s New York, The Neal W. and Frances R. Hunter Collection. Fine Chinese Snuff Bottles, 15 September 1998, lot 123. Another red overlay snuff bottle with a continuous pond design is illustrated in: Hugh Moss, Victor Graham and Ka Bo Tsang, A Treasury of Chinese Snuff Bottles. The Mary and George Bloch Collection, Volume 5, Part 2, Glass, Hong Kong, cat. no. 875, pp. 435-436. 

Provenance:

Formerly in an American private collection