The fine carving and decorative scheme with three major peony blossoms placed triangularly with foliage and minor blossoms may be compared to a very similarly decorated, larger box in the Nezu Museum, illustrated in Nezu Bijutsukan, Mei hin shusei, Kodansha, Japan, 1986, p. 96, no. 493.

A slightly larger (18.7 cm. diam.) carved lacquer box, with incised Xuande mark in the collection of the National Palace Museum, Taibei, has very similar peony decoration. This is illustrated in Masterpieces of Chinese Carved Lacquer Ware in the National Palace Museum, Gakken, 1971, no. 7. Two comparable smaller examples both with Xuande marks were sold, the first from Estate of Dr Ip Yee (13.2 cm.), sold in Hong Kong, 19 November 1984, lot 110; and the other (10.8 cm.) was sold in these Rooms, The Imperial Sale, 7 April 1997, lot 23. The latter is dated to the fifteenth year of Yongle which corresponds to A. D. 1407. In an essay by J. Figgess, 'A Letter from the Court of Yung Lo', Transactions of the Oriental Ceramic Society, vol. 34, 1962, pp. 97-100, the author suggested that the box from the Dr Ip Yee collection may have been the type of box presented by Emperor Yongle to the the Japanese Shogun, Ashikaga Yoshimitsu, in recognition of his merit in capturing pirates who plagued maritime activities between China and Japan.