Lot Essay
The top decoration includes a small rectangular mother-of-pearl panel incised with a nine-character inscription, which reads: Ji'an Luling Yong Yangguo (?) zuo which may be translated as: "Made in Luling District in Ji'an Prefecture/Jiangxi Province" and probably "... by Yong Yangguo." It is recorded that during the Song and Yuan dynasties the best mother-of-pearl inlay lacquers were produced in that area.
Compare a closely related nine-lobed lacquer box similarly decorated with haliotis segments, illustrated by K.J. Brandt in Chinesische Lackarbeiten, Stuttgart: Lindenmuseum, 1988, pl.87, p.141. Cf. also the 'laque burgauté' box illustrated by The Oriental Society of Hong Kong in 2000 Years of Chinese Lacquer,Catalogue, no.90; also the similar box at the Idemitsu Museum, Tokyo, registered as an Important Cultural Property and illustrated by Nishioka, Chugoku no Raden, Tokyo National Museum, March 1981, colour pl.8; and the example without an inscription at the Museum of Eastern Art, Cologne; see also Nishioka, op.cit., where some twenty examples of inlaid lacquer of this group are illustrated and dated to the Yuan dynasty; and Kuwayama, Far Eastern Lacquer, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 1982, p.31, where the subjects of this group are mentioned.
Compare a closely related nine-lobed lacquer box similarly decorated with haliotis segments, illustrated by K.J. Brandt in Chinesische Lackarbeiten, Stuttgart: Lindenmuseum, 1988, pl.87, p.141. Cf. also the 'laque burgauté' box illustrated by The Oriental Society of Hong Kong in 2000 Years of Chinese Lacquer,Catalogue, no.90; also the similar box at the Idemitsu Museum, Tokyo, registered as an Important Cultural Property and illustrated by Nishioka, Chugoku no Raden, Tokyo National Museum, March 1981, colour pl.8; and the example without an inscription at the Museum of Eastern Art, Cologne; see also Nishioka, op.cit., where some twenty examples of inlaid lacquer of this group are illustrated and dated to the Yuan dynasty; and Kuwayama, Far Eastern Lacquer, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 1982, p.31, where the subjects of this group are mentioned.