A near identical box, but with a shou character replacing the central dragon in the mother-of-pearl inlaid medallion was included in the Metropolitan Museum of Art Special Exhibition catalogue East Asian Lacquer, The Florence and Herbert Irving Collection, New York, 1992, no. 3, where the authors note that boxes with lobed sides and pewter trim form a distinct group among lacquerware of the Yuan period and that this particular form most probably was adapted from contemporaneous silver ware.

Another black lacquer box of this size and form with pewter wire borders but without the mother-of-pearl medallion is illustrated in Homage to Heaven, Homage to Earth, Chinese Treasure of the Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto, 1992, pl.15. Cf. also a box sold in our New York Rooms, 9 June 1997, lot 2.

A smaller box of this shape in the Avery Brundage Collection, San Francisco is illustrated in Hai-wai Yi-chen, Chinese Art in Overseas Collections, Lacquerware, pl. no. 53; and another box in the Cleveland Museum of Art was included in the exhibition catalogue Chinese Art Under the Mongols: The Yuan Dynasty, 1968, and illustrated in the Catalogue, pl. 284.