3 Ornate Asian Glass Snuff Bottles. Two retain their caps, while the third does not. The capless one has painting on the outside, while the other two are more transparent and have paintings on their insides. 

Largest Size: 2 1/4 x 1 x 2 3/4 in. 

#4640 . 

Tobacco was first introduced by the Portuguese to the Chinese court at Beijing some time during the 16th Century. It was originally smoked in pipes before the establishment of the Qing Dynasty. Snuff bottles were used during the Qing Dynasty to contain powdered tobacco, as smoking tobacco was made illegal early on during the Qing Dynasty, but the use of snuff was allowed because the Chinese considered snuff to be a remedy for common illnesses such as colds, headaches, and stomach disorders. The use of snuff and snuff bottles to carry it in spread through the upper class, and by the end of the 17th Century it had become a part of common social rituals to use snuff. This lasted through most of the 18th Century, as the trend eventually spread into the rest of the country and into every social class. It was even customary to offer a pinch of snuff as a way to greet friends and relatives, and snuff bottles soon became an object of beauty and a way to represent status and wealth. The public use of snuff decreased with the fall of the Qing Dynasty and died away soon after the establishment of the Republic of China. However, contemporary snuff bottles are still being made, and can be purchased in souvenir shops, flea markets, and museum gift shops. Original snuff bottles from the Qing period are particularly sought after by serious collectors and museums. The most valuable ones include inside painting, a genre that emerged in the late Qing Dynasty. In general most snuff bottles were small enough to fit inside the palm of the hand, and were made out of many different materials including porcelain, jade, rhinoceros horn, ivory, wood, coconut shells, lapis lazuli, gneiss, cork, chalcedony, jasper, carnelian, malachite, quartz, tortoiseshell, metal, turquoise, agate, mother-of-pearl, and ceramics, though probably the most commonly used material was glass. The stopper usually had a very small spoon attached for extracting the snuff. Some bottles are completely devoid of decoration, while others are incredibly ornate. As in all Chinese arts and crafts, motifs and symbols play an important part in decorative detail. Symbols are derived from a multitude of sources such as legends, history, religion, philosophy and superstition. The ideas used are almost always directed toward bringing wealth, health, good luck, longevity, even immortality to the owner of an artifact, frequently as a wish expressed in a kind of coded form by the giver of a gift.