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Lot Essay
The present cover was made as the front cover for the sutra Dasheng Fawang jing, one of the 108 volumes of the bKa-gyur, or Ganjur in Chinese. According to Dr Peter Lam in Layered Beauty, Hong Kong, 2010, p. 54, two sets of bKa-gyur were bestowed sequentially by the Emperor Yongle to the two Buddhist abbots from Tibet in 1413 and 1416, now preserved at the Potala Palace and the Sera Monastery in Lhasa, respectively.
Compare a set of similar covers, dated c. 1410, published by J.C.Y. Watt and B.B. Ford, East Asian Lacquer: The Florence and Herbert Irving Collection, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1991, pp. 116-7, where the authors note that these lacquered covers provide the earliest examples of Ming-style qiangjin work. A further set is illustrated by R.D. Jacobsen, Appreciating China, Minneapolis Institute of Arts, 2002, no. 48. For other similar covers sold at auctions, see a set from the Lee Family Collection, sold at Christie’s Hong Kong, Important Chinese Lacquer from the Lee Family Collection, Part II, 1 December 2009, lot 1821; an inscribed pair sold at Christie’s Hong Kong, 28 November 2012, lot 2260; a set from the Baoyizhai Collection, sold at Sotheby’s Hong Kong, 8 April 2014, lot 38; and a single back cover sold at Christie’s Hong Kong, 31 May 2017, lot 2816.
Compare a set of similar covers, dated c. 1410, published by J.C.Y. Watt and B.B. Ford, East Asian Lacquer: The Florence and Herbert Irving Collection, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1991, pp. 116-7, where the authors note that these lacquered covers provide the earliest examples of Ming-style qiangjin work. A further set is illustrated by R.D. Jacobsen, Appreciating China, Minneapolis Institute of Arts, 2002, no. 48. For other similar covers sold at auctions, see a set from the Lee Family Collection, sold at Christie’s Hong Kong, Important Chinese Lacquer from the Lee Family Collection, Part II, 1 December 2009, lot 1821; an inscribed pair sold at Christie’s Hong Kong, 28 November 2012, lot 2260; a set from the Baoyizhai Collection, sold at Sotheby’s Hong Kong, 8 April 2014, lot 38; and a single back cover sold at Christie’s Hong Kong, 31 May 2017, lot 2816.