Bottling up their talent

Li Shaoyue's painted snuff bottles feature themes such as human images and landscapes. CHINA DAILY With surgical precision artist produces fantastic images inside a tiny vial, Yang Feiyue reports. Seen from afar, Li Shaoyue wields a thin bamboo stick up and down inside a tiny glass vessel secured steadily in her left hand, as if trying to fish something out of it. The air is still in her workshop in Zibo, East China's Shandong province, as the artist, who just turned 30, sits still behind a desk and concentrates on the glass bottle before her, from which vivid landscape scenery, animal and human images emerge from the inside. "The old-fashioned snuff bottles with interior paintings are now sought after as collectibles and gifts, while colored glazed beads featuring the art can be accessories," Li says.