Lot Essay
It is very rare to find dragon designs on Yueyao wares and no other Yueyao box decorated with a dragon appears to be recorded. Compare the Yueyao bowl carved with a dragon in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, illustrated by W. Watson, op.cit., 1984, pl.109; and the fragmentary jar carved with dragons, excavated from the Five Dynasties tomb of the King of Wu-Yue, illustrated in Chugoku Toji Zenshu, vol.4, pl.170, which is now in the Zhejiang Provincial Museum, Hangzhou. Compare also a box of similar shape in the Shanghai Museum, which is inscribed with a date equivalent to 978 A.D. and decorated with a flower spray within a similar incised scroll border to the present lot, illustrated by Mayuyama, Chugoku Bunbutsu Kenbun, pl.144.
