TANG DYNASTY (618-907)

Details

A RARE PARCEL-GILT SILVER CLAMSHELL BOX
Tang dynasty (618-907)
Realistically shaped as a clamshell, each half finely chased with various birds perched or in flight amidst delicately meandering lotus stems that issue from the series of curved lobes radiating from the hinge, all with fine, incised details reserved in gilding on a ring-matte ground within a plain gilt border
2 5/8in. (6.6cm) across, fitted box

Provenance

Christie's, New York, 1 December 1994, lot 64, The Arthur M. Sackler Collections.

Lot Essay

Compare the silver shell-form box hinged in the same place but of larger size (3¾in. long) and decorated with birds and animals amidst a grapevine on a ring-matte ground illustrated by B. Gyllensvärd, Chinese Gold and Silver in the Carl Kempe Collection, Stockholm, 1953, no. 125. Other silver shell boxes with the hinge in a different location and also differently decorated have been exhibited: one from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Early Chinese Gold & Silver, China Institute, New York, 21 October 1971-30 January 1972, no. 69; and another from the Art Institute of Chicago, Tang Dynasty Chinese Gold & Silver in American Collections, Dayton Art Institute, Dayton, Ohio, 1984, no. 40.

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