A RARE PARCEL-GILT SILVER CLAMSHELL BOX

Details

A RARE PARCEL-GILT SILVER CLAMSHELL BOX
TANG DYNASTY

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

Provenance

Rosenheim Collection
Bennett Collection
Desmond Gure Collection, no. 86

Lot Essay

Compare the silver shell-form box hinged in the same place but of larger size (3 3/4in. long) and decorated with birds and animals amidst a grapvine on a ring-matte ground illustrated by Bo Gyllensvard, 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 in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Early Chinese Gold & Silver, China Institute, New York, October 21, 1971-January 30, 1972, Catalogue no. 69; and another in the Art Institute of Chicago, Tang Dynasty Chinese Gold & Silver in American Collections, Dayton Art Institute, Dayton, Ohio, 1984, Catalogue no. 40