A SPINACH-GREEN JADE SQUARE BOX AND COVER

19TH CENTURY

Details

A SPINACH-GREEN JADE SQUARE BOX AND COVER
19TH CENTURY
The top of the cover is delicately carved with a shou-character medallion, surrounded by two confronting kui-dragons and four mythical beasts. The sides of the cover are decorated with roundels of the Twelve Ornaments. The stone is of a deep green tone with darker and paler speckling throughout.
4.1/8 in. (10.4 cm.) wide

Provenance

Accompanying this lot is an old letter to Lady Winifred Cecil, stating that the box was sent to her by N. Du Breuil, Old Cathay, Legation Street, Peking.

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Lot Essay

The Twelve Ornaments are frequently adopted as decoration on textiles, symbolising the sun, the moon, stars, mountains, dragon, bird, temple vessels, aquatic grasses, fire with flaming scrolls, millet grains, the axe, and the fu.

See an example of a square spinach-green jade box and cover similarly decorated with the Twelve Ornaments, in the collection of the Palace Museum, Beijing, illustrated in The Complete Collection of Treasures of the Palace Museum - Jadeware III, Hong Kong, 2000, p.225, pl. 184

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