£2,000
A Chinese bamboo 'landscape and figures' perfume holder, 18th century, of cylindrical form, finely carved and pierced on the round with a continuous scene of a sage, two ladies and a child seated at a kang table, boys playing with toys and a lady and child on a terrace amid rockwork, trees and pavilions, turned horn base, warm caramel patina, 17.7cm high, minor faults.
Provenance - Dr J W H Grice (1891-1976) collection.
CONDITION: The turned horn top is lacking. There are several splits a round the top of the holder and a small split to a branch halfway down, otherwise in reasonable condition.
Provenance
Dr John William Hawksley Grice (1891-1976) is regarded as a very important collector of carving in Britain; at the time he was collecting, he appears to have been unique among his peers for admiring Qing dynasty carvings. He wrote about 'Chinese Bamboo Carving' in Country Life in 1954, one of the first articles in English on the subject, and at the time he was collecting he appears to have been unique among his peers for admiring late carving. Dr Grice and his wife Kathleen moved to China in 1922 and he worked as a doctor in Tianjin for 30 years. He built his ivory and bamboo collection in China in the decades he spent there before leaving in 1952. He gave a sizeable proportion of his carved bamboo collection to London's Victoria and Albert Museum and donated other ivories and bamboo to the British Museum.
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