Lot 58
![[FROM THE COLLECTION OF BENJAMIN EVERETT GILL] AGATE SNUFF BOTTLE](https://media.app.artisio.co/media/104cbde6-0d38-43cb-9e0f-bb721ef57bcf/inventory/84a049cf-041d-4d75-be1b-532ab6fb97ad/79224a52-6a22-4f04-9f61-6edbd9de7a3f/0001_ZzvkFi_original.jpg)
[FROM THE COLLECTION OF BENJAMIN EVERETT GILL] AGATE SNUFF BOTTLE
20TH CENTURY
Auction: 13 March 2024 from 10:00 GMT
Description
二十世紀 瑪瑙鼻烟壺 帶木座
of bottle form with elongated and cylindrical neck, with wooden stand
Dimensions
6.8cm high
Provenance
From the collection of Benjamin Everett Gill (1838-1901) from Aberdeen. Benjamin E Gill was a shipwright with Hall, Russell & Company. He built and sailed to Japan in 1869 on the Jho Sho Maru with Thomas Blake Glover who had commissioned the vessel. After they arrived in Nagasaki in January 1870, Thomas B Glover sold the boat to the Kumamoto Domain and that started the Japanese navy. A collection of Asian Art was brought back to Scotland by 1884 when Benjamin E Gill got married. The illustration shown Benjamin E Gill in Nagasaki in the early 1870s.
The collection was passed down by direct descent to the current owner's father and mother, Michael Peter Gill (1934-2015) and Shiona Airlie (1953-2023), and subsequently grew. Michael P Gill was the head of art at George Watson's College, and Shiona Airlie, who had a lifelong love of everything Chinese, its history, culture and language, was the author of Thistle and Bamboo: The Life and Times of Sir James Stewart Lockhart (1989) and Scottish Mandarin: The Life and Times of Sir Reginald Johnston (2012). Sir Reginald Fleming Johnston, KCMG, CBE was a Scottish diplomat and colonial official who served as the tutor and advisor to Puyi, the last emperor of China.