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Lot Essay
The scene of a scholar beside a lotus pond in a garden setting was a popular theme in paintings and on ceramics and other works of art throughout the Ming and Qing dynasties, and is meant to evoke the refined lifestyle of the literati. The verses on this box are from a famous poem on the same theme by Zhou Dunyi (1017-1093) entitled Ai lian shuo (On the Love of Lotus). In the poem, Zhou uses flowers to describe different types of men and presents the lotus as the “gentleman among flowers,” exemplary of the character of the ideal scholar-gentleman. The verses on this box may be translated as: “hollow at the center and straight outside; no vines and no branches” (open-minded and upright; not overreaching and not diverging).
A lac burgauté circular box and cover of similar form to the present box and decorated with figures in a landscape on the cover, in the Shanghai Museum, is illustrated in Qian wen wan hua: Zhongguo lidai qiqi yishu (In a Myriad of Forms: the Ancient Chinese Lacquers), Shanghai, 2018, pp. 196-97, no. 131, and dated to the early Qing dynasty, 17th – 18th century.
A lac burgauté circular box and cover of similar form to the present box and decorated with figures in a landscape on the cover, in the Shanghai Museum, is illustrated in Qian wen wan hua: Zhongguo lidai qiqi yishu (In a Myriad of Forms: the Ancient Chinese Lacquers), Shanghai, 2018, pp. 196-97, no. 131, and dated to the early Qing dynasty, 17th – 18th century.