London-based artist Hannah Lim has spent years reworking the Chinese snuff bottle into something altogether more personal. Her sculptures keep the vessel's essential character — ornate, jewel-like, richly decorated — but scale it up from pocket-sized to pieces that need two hands to hold, adding anthropomorphic touches and a hidden hanging charm inside each lid that nods to the tiny spoon attached to traditional bottles. Lim, who is of mixed British and Singaporean heritage, works in polymer clay and Jesmonite, finishing each piece with chalk, acrylic paint, and a gloss coat. The surfaces carry painted and relief portraits of animals and imagined creatures drawn from sources including the ancient Chinese text 'The Classic of Mountains and Seas'. For several years she has engaged with chinoiserie, the 17th- and 18th-century European fashion for mimicking Asian motifs, which she aims to reclaim and reimagine in a more conscientious way. She began the series after encountering historical snuff bottles in UK museum collections, fascinated by their ornate designs and variety. Early works emphasized personal aspects of her heritage; over time they have come to track different points in her research. She is now experimenting with scale and materials, including metal, and recent pieces such as 'Orchid Table' incorporate laser-cut elements. Her solo exhibition 'Reimaginings' is on view at the Museum of East Asian Art in Bath through 14 November. Later this month her work will also appear with Cynthia Corbett Gallery in Paris, and later this year she is set to unveil a new public artwork in Paddington, London. Lim studied sculpture at the University of Edinburgh and completed an MFA at Oxford's Ruskin School of Art, and was shortlisted for Bloomberg New Contemporaries and RSA New Contemporaries. Her practice sits at a productive intersection of craft, identity, and the politics of ornament — a reclaiming of decorative traditions on her own terms.