Material: Wood
Style: Sumatra, Indonesia
Size: Height 23.5 cm, Width 17 cm, Depth 8 cm 
Order Number: MHSACCB1

Chinese community in Sumatra cigar box with shelves and a classic Chinese engraving on the top.

Early – mid 20th century.

Please ask for the price (or make an offer).

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Material: Silver
Style: China
Size: Height 3. cm, Diameter 4.5 cm
Order Number: MHSACCSB2

Chinese boxes are often shallow and circular, with straight, intricately carved sides.

This one is round and carved.  The repoussé animals are detailed and rendered in a very charming manner.  A very fine little box.

70-80 years old.

Please ask for the price (or make an offer).

The post Antique Chinese Silver Box 2 appeared first on Murni's in Bali.

Material: Silver
Style: China
Size: Height 3 cm, Diameter 5.25 cm
Order Number: MHSACCSB3

Chinese boxes are often shallow and circular, with straight, intricately carved sides.

 The repoussé flowers are detailed and rendered in a very charming manner.  A very fine little box.

70-80 years old.

Please ask for the price (or make an offer).

The post Antique Chinese Silver Box 3 appeared first on Murni's in Bali.

Material: Silver
Style: China
Size: Height 3.5 cm, Length 5.5 cm, Width 5.5 cm
Order Number: MHSACCSB1

Around 3400 BC the opium poppy was cultivated in Lower Mesopotamia and called the ‘joy plant’.  It was passed along to the Assyrians, then the Babylonians and then the Egyptians. The opium trade flourished during the reigns of Thutmose IV, Akhenaton and King Tutankhamen.  They traded with the Phoenicians and Minoans, who sold it to Greece, Carthage and Europe. In 330 BC Alexander the Great introduced it to Persia and India.

Opium was introduced to China by Turkish and Arab traders during the T’ang dynasty (618-906 AD) in the late 6th or early 7th century as a medicinal herb, atrade item. It was used in small amounts until the 17th century, but was generally regarded as barbaric and subversive. 

Opium is dried latex obtained from the seed pod of the opium poppy, Papaver somniferum. It was classified in 1753 by Linnaeus, the father of botany.

In the 1600s Portuguese merchants carried cargoes of Indian opium through Macao to China. and the Dutch brought Indian opium from Java and taught the Chinese in Taiwan to mix it with tobacco and smoke it. The Dutch had a trading post at Tainan on the south coast of Taiwan. The Ming Emperor Wan Li, who ruled from 1573 to 1620, was addicted to it. 

In 1641 the last Ming Emperor Chung Cheng banned tobacco smoking on pain of death and people started smoking pure opium. The opium pipe must have been invented around this time, as a tobacco pipe could not be used.

Early in the 18th century the Portuguese imported large quantities opium from their colony Goa on the west coast of India and sold it to China for a huge profit. In 1729 the Emperor of the Manchu Ching dynasty tried to ban the import and sale of opium by strangulation of the owners of any place where opium smoking was carried on (except under licence for medical use), but it was still smuggled in and the ban had no effect.

In 1750 the British assumed control of Bengal and Bihar, the two main opium growing areas in India. By 1773 the British East India Company became the leading suppliers, dominating the trade out of Calcutta to China, and bought tea with the proceeds. England was addicted to Chinese tea, which was a Chinese monopoly. The British tried to ban tea but riots on the streets of London ensued. Paying for it in silver was threatening to bankrupt the country, but trading Indian opium, produced at very little expense, for tea came to the rescue. Opium was sold on the Chinese black market for silver and used to buy the tea from official Chinese sources in Canton. Now the Chinese were being drained of silver, which led another ban on the import of opium in 1799, which was ignored.

In China smoking opium was as popular as coffee or cigarettes are now – millions smoked it and amongst all levels of society from the humble rickshaw puller to the emperor. Women smoked it too.

It produces feelings of contentment, well-being and euphoria. The practice is highly addictive and wrecked people’s health. It gave rise to the expression ‘pipe dream’, which described an unobtainable ambition.

It was a highly profitable trade. in 1767 the British East India Company imported 2,000 chests of opium a year. Poppy growers in India were forbidden to sell to anyone else in 1793. By 1820 there were an estimated 2 million addicts in China, which guaranteed a constant demand.

In 1819 the poet John Keats experimented with opium and in 1821 Thomas de Quincey wrote Confessions of an English Opium-Eater.

In 1830 Jardine Matheson & Company takes over the Indian opium trade from the British East India Company.

Addiction became so bad that the emperor Tao Kuang decided to take action in 1836. He appointed a commissioner to take charge in Canton. In 1838 Lin Tse-Hsu, ransomed 300 Britons for their opium and ordered all foreign traders, mostly British, to surrender their opium, more than 20,000 chests , which the Chinese threw into the Pearl River. They burnt down warehouses where opium was stored and set fire to British ships waiting to unload opium.

Queen Victoria sent in the British navy, launching and winning the First Opium War 1839. Under the peace treaty, the Treaty of Nanking 1842, to China’s shame, Britain acquired Hong Kong in perpetuity and China had to open up five new trading ports, Canton, Amoy, Foochou, Ningbo and Shanghai, on mainland China to British trade, and pay a huge indemnity of 21 million dollars.

In 1852 the British annex Lower Burma and import large amounts of opium from India and sell it through a government monopoly.

In 1858 under the Treaty of Tientsin after the Second Opium War (1856-1858) the Chinese had cede Kowloon, open up another dozen ports, pay another huge indemnity and make the importation of opium legal. Domestic cultivation of the opium was rapid and resulted in 15 to 20 million addicts by the end of the 19th century. China became the largest grower and consumer of opium in the world. The British had stolen a few tea shoots from China during the 1890s and were growing it around Darjeeling and were able to greatly reduce the opium trade with China.

The discovery of gold in California in 1849 brought many Chinese to the country seeking a fortune. They arrived at the port of San Francisco and established the first Chinatown in America. Thousands followed. Opium dens were built in the basements of businesses, such as Chinese laundries. When the gold ran out, the Chinese migrated and got jobs building railroads and canals and on farms and trading. Within 20 years the opium habit had spread all over North America as far afield as Chicago and Manhatten.

Governments all over the world now tried to ban it. San Francisco in North America was the first with public bonfires in the 1870s. In 1878 Britain enacted the Opium Act in India to try and reduce consumption by restricting the sale to registered Chinese opium smokers  and Indian opium eaters. The Burmese were prohibited from smoking opium. In 1890 the US imposes a tax on opium and morphine. In 1911 the Manchu dynasty was overthrown and the Republic of China founded. The same year Britain banned shipping opium to China in British ships. Indians in Calcutta and Jewish merchants from Baghdad continued to supply it and growing and consumption flourished inside China. Shanghai became the focal point for trade and consumption and the city was built on it.

There was a huge bonfire in San Francisco’s Chinatown in 1914. Fortunately the best opium pipes and accessories were rescued by San Francisco’s mayor James Rolph and placed in the Golden Gate Museum.

During the 1920s and 1930s it was popular among jazz musicians and blues singers, who called it hip after the position of lying down when smoking it. Later giving rise to hipster and hippie.

Chinese migrations to Australia, New Zealand and South Africa brought recreational opium smoking to those countries. The habit was restricted to the Chinese and it did not really catch on in Europe, except in France, and there were numerous opium dens in the East End of London during the late 19th century.

Anti-opium legislation was enacted in Canada in the early 20^th century. There were opium eradication campaigns in Manila in the 1920s and thousands of opium pipes were confiscated in Hawaii and other US Pacific possessions. In 1925 there was a US federal ban on opium, which gave rise to a thriving black market in New York’s Chinatown. In Indonesia entry to a licensed opium den was permitted by showing an identity card proving the person was ethnic Chinese.

After Japan’s defeat in World War II, the Chinese Civil War (1945-1949) broke out between Chiang Kai-shek’s  Nationalist government and Mao Tse-tung’s Communist party, which won. The Communist regime immediately banned the sale and consumption of opium and closed the dens and all opium pipes and equipment were burned in large bonfires.  It was forbidden to make the equipment too. The eradication was successful.

Smoking continued outside China, where there were expatriate Chinese communities, such as in Hong Kong. In the 1940s the Golden Triangle of Burma , Laos and Northern Thailand became a major player for tribes, especially the Hmong, and warlords in the opium trade, aided by the French, and later by the US in the 1950s, who wanted them as allies in their efforts to limit the spread of Communism.

It was finally banned in North Vietnam in 1954, Thailand in 1959 and Burma in 1962.  The last legally licensed opium den in the world was in Thailand and the largest one, with 5,000 boarders, was in New Road in Bangkok called Heng Lak Hung. In 1975 South Vietnam and Cambodia fell to communist regimes which banned it. The last remaining opium den in Laos, in Vientiane, was closed down in 2004.

Rich Chinese kept a room in their houses reserved for smoking and entertained special guests there. A maid or house boy was trained to prepare the pipes. The poor Chinese frequented public opium dens, but only men. Women smoked at home. It was a habit for the middle-aged and elderly, not young people, and imbued with Taoist philosophy.  The ideal for health was to balance yin and yang. Opium was yin, cold, and feminine, slowing respiration, lowering blood pressure and decreasing appetite. It had to be balanced with yang foods, such as fatty meats, shrimps and mushrooms, herbal tonics, such as cinnamon, and beverages when they smoked. Plenty of tea was served as a minimum.

Opium dens, once prevalent in the Chinese districts of Southeast Asia (Thailand, Malaysia, Vietnam, Burma, Laos, Cambodia, Singapore, the Philippines and Indonesia, where the Chinese emigrated), allowed low-grade opium to be smoked on woven bamboo mats in simple surroundings for a very small cash payment, but they are now all gone. Food, snacks, hot Chinese tea, mahjong and prostitutes were all available.

The Chinese refined opium smoking into a sophisticated art form, which reached its zenith in the 19th and early 20th centuries. The equipment used was often extremely artistic, but the art was destroyed when opium was banned and very few items remain, except in a number of museums, such as in Hong Kong and Chinatown, San Francisco.

Opium smoking still exists in Nagaland, and among tribal people, such as the Hmong, Akha and Mien, whose ancestors migrated south from Yunnan in China in the 18^th and 19^th centuries.

Three items are essential: the pipe (about 56 centimetres or 22 inches long and 2.5 centimetres or 1 inch diameter), the oil lamp and the needle. A wad of opium about the size of a pea is balanced on the end of the needle, which is placed over a tiny hole in the pipe bowl. The pipe bowl is shaped like a door knob.

Heat from the short lamp vaporizes the opium pellet at a low temperature. Just the right amount of heat has to be channeled on to a very small surface through the funnel chimney. It should not be burned. The smoke is then breathed into the smoker’s lungs from the pipe. Several pills of opium were smoked at a single session lasting several hours depending on the smoker’s tolerance to the drug. The effects could last twelve hours.

The most popular material for a pipe stem was bamboo. There were also ivory pipe stems, but they were not so good. Ivory mouthpieces, however, were the best, better than ox or water buffalo horn, which were alternatives. For show, but hardly used, mouthpieces were made of jade and stems were sheathed in turtle shell, silver, enamel and porcelain.

The pipe bowl was attached to the stem by a metal saddle, usually brass, but it could be silver or an alloy, two-thirds the way down from the mouthpiece. Pipe bowls of the late 18^th to early 19^th centuries were made of fragile fired clay. Later ones were porcelain and even jade or silver. They were designed to be easily removed for frequent cleaning by special scraping tools that looked like screwdrivers. All smokers owned at least one scraper as a pipe bowl would become full of dross after ten to twenty pipes. Constant cleaning eventually damaged the bowl which would have to be repaired. Pipe bowls were incised with designs and vivid decorations.

A regular opium smoker stored his supply of opium in a silver box, which he used when travelling and placed the box on a tray beside him while smoking.  Chinese boxes are often shallow and circular, with straight, intricately carved sides.

This one is hexagonal and carved.  The repoussé foliage is detailed and rendered in a very charming manner.  A very fine little box.

There are examples in Four Centuries of Silver, Personal Adornment in the Qing Dynasty and After, Margaret Duda, Times Editions, 2002, pages 154-155.

19th – early 20th century.

Please ask for the price (or make an offer).

The post Antique Chinese Silver Opium Box 1 appeared first on Murni's in Bali.

Material: Ivory or horn
Style: China
Size: Height 6 cm, Width 1.75 cm
Order Number: MHSACSB1

Snuff is powdered tobacco leaves mixed with aromatic spices.

Christopher Columbus saw the American Indians sniffing tobacco during his second voyage in 1494 and brought it back to Europe. It became fashionable in Spain and France, but was not popular in England until Charles II returned from exile in France – he was a fan.

It was popular in high society Europe and was taken by Queen Anne, Queen Charlotte, the consort of George III of England, George IV, Charles Darwin, Duke of Wellington. Lord Nelson, Napoleon, Alexander Pope, the actress Sarah Siddons and Mozart. Abraham Lincoln was also a connoisseur.

The Portuguese introduced it to China in the mid-16th century and gave it as a present to Emperor Kangxi (1654-1722 AD) in the 17th century.

It was originally used  by members of the Chinese Imperial court for medicinal purposes, believed to  ease headaches and digestive problems, and it then spread to all levels of Chinese society,

It was mass produced in the late 18th and 19th centuries. Domestic snuff came from the provinces of Shandong, Sichuan, Guangdong, Zhejiang and Jiangsu, and imported snuff came from Spain, France, and Scotland. The most highly prized was from Brazil.

The original small boxes were incompatible with the humidity of Asia, so the Chinese designed small bottles with narrow necks and added stoppers to keep the powder dry and maintain the aroma.  Small bottles could be carried easily and fit comfortably in the hand. They were made from many materials, such as porcelain, lacquer, jade, ivory, metal, glass, horn (rhinoceros, buffalo), mother-of-pearl, tortoise shell, bamboo, and gemstones.

In the early 18th century, influenced by the Jesuit missionaries who were skilled in glass making and enamelling, there was a increase in making glass snuff bottles. After the end of the Qing dynasty in 1911, the use of snuff declined dramatically in China.

19th – early 20th century.

Please ask for the price (or make an offer).

The post Antique Chinese Snuff and Perfume Bottle 1 appeared first on Murni's in Bali.

Material: Ivory or horn
Style: China
Size: Height 3.5 cm, Width 3.25 cm
Order Number: MHSACSB2

Snuff is powdered tobacco leaves mixed with aromatic spices.

Christopher Columbus saw the American Indians sniffing tobacco during his second voyage in 1494 and brought it back to Europe. It became fashionable in Spain and France, but was not popular in England until Charles II returned from exile in France – he was a fan.

It was popular in high society Europe and was taken by Queen Anne, Queen Charlotte, the consort of George III of England, George IV, Charles Darwin, Duke of Wellington. Lord Nelson, Napoleon, Alexander Pope, the actress Sarah Siddons and Mozart. Abraham Lincoln was also a connoisseur.

The Portuguese introduced it to China in the mid-16th century and gave it as a present to Emperor Kangxi (1654-1722 AD) in the 17th century.

It was originally used  by members of the Chinese Imperial court for medicinal purposes, believed to  ease headaches and digestive problems, and it then spread to all levels of Chinese society,

It was mass produced in the late 18th and 19th centuries. Domestic snuff came from the provinces of Shandong, Sichuan, Guangdong, Zhejiang and Jiangsu, and imported snuff came from Spain, France, and Scotland. The most highly prized was from Brazil.

The original small boxes were incompatible with the humidity of Asia, so the Chinese designed small bottles with narrow necks and added stoppers to keep the powder dry and maintain the aroma.  Small bottles could be carried easily and fit comfortably in the hand. They were made from many materials, such as porcelain, lacquer, jade, ivory, metal, glass, horn (rhinoceros, buffalo), mother-of-pearl, tortoise shell, bamboo, and gemstones.

In the early 18th century, influenced by the Jesuit missionaries who were skilled in glass making and enamelling, there was a increase in making glass snuff bottles. After the end of the Qing dynasty in 1911, the use of snuff declined dramatically in China.

19th – early 20th century.

Please ask for the price (or make an offer).

The post Antique Chinese Snuff and Perfume Bottle 2 appeared first on Murni's in Bali.