Lot Essay
It is rare to find a casket of this type made of tortoiseshell rather than ivory, the usual material used to construct these caskets or boxes for the Western export market during the late 18th and 19th century. The present tortoiseshell example is similar in shape and style of carving to an ivory casket presented by the Emperor Qianlong to Maria Theresia, Empress of Austria (1717-1780), now in the Fairhaven Collection, Anglesey Abbey, Cambridgeshire, and illustrated by Soame Jenyns, Chinese Art III, New York, 1982, no. 131
A tortoiseshell box of somewhat smaller size (25.7cm.), also made for the Western market, and similarly carved with dense figural scenes, but of plain rectanglular shape, in the Victoria and Albert Museum, was included in the O.C.S. exhibition, Chinese Ivories from the Shang to the Qing, British Museum, May 24-August 19, 1984, Catalogue no. 280. Compare, also, the smaller, circular, tortoiseshell box with similarly carved scenes included in the Min Chiu Society Thirtieth Anniversary Exhibition, Selected Treasures of Chinese Art, Hong Kong Museum of Art, November 30, 1990-February 10, 1991, Catalogue no. 236
A tortoiseshell box of somewhat smaller size (25.7cm.), also made for the Western market, and similarly carved with dense figural scenes, but of plain rectanglular shape, in the Victoria and Albert Museum, was included in the O.C.S. exhibition, Chinese Ivories from the Shang to the Qing, British Museum, May 24-August 19, 1984, Catalogue no. 280. Compare, also, the smaller, circular, tortoiseshell box with similarly carved scenes included in the Min Chiu Society Thirtieth Anniversary Exhibition, Selected Treasures of Chinese Art, Hong Kong Museum of Art, November 30, 1990-February 10, 1991, Catalogue no. 236