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Lot Essay
The current box is accompanied by a label suggesting that it was previously exhibited at the Victoria and Albert Museum.
Boxes in octagonal form with the Jiajing mark are quite rare. The ‘pheasant and peony’ design is one of the typical decorative patterns for Jiajing octagonal boxes. There are a few comparable examples, all bearing the Jiajing six-character mark. One is in the Metropolitan Museum of Art and is published in Suzanne G. Valenstein, A Handbook of Chinese Ceramics, New York, 1989, pl. 167; another, originally in the Eumorfopoulos Collection and now in the Victoria and Albert Museum, is illustrated in R.L. Hobson, Catalogue of the Chinese, Corean and Persian Pottery and Porcelain: The Ming Dynasty, London, vol. 4, 1927, plate III. D26; also one published in Abu Ridho, Oriental Ceramics: The World’s Great Collections, vol. 3, Tokyo, 1982, pl. 203; and another example illustrated in Sekai Toji Zenshu: Ming, vol. 14, Tokyo, 1976, plates, 70-1, pp. 68-9; a further example is in the Nanjing Museum.
It is recorded in the Grand Gazetteer of Jiangxi Province: Volume VII that “blue and white boxes decorated with flowers, birds, and insects” were produced in the nineteenth year of the Wanli reign (1591), which corresponds to the decoration of the present lot.
Boxes in octagonal form with the Jiajing mark are quite rare. The ‘pheasant and peony’ design is one of the typical decorative patterns for Jiajing octagonal boxes. There are a few comparable examples, all bearing the Jiajing six-character mark. One is in the Metropolitan Museum of Art and is published in Suzanne G. Valenstein, A Handbook of Chinese Ceramics, New York, 1989, pl. 167; another, originally in the Eumorfopoulos Collection and now in the Victoria and Albert Museum, is illustrated in R.L. Hobson, Catalogue of the Chinese, Corean and Persian Pottery and Porcelain: The Ming Dynasty, London, vol. 4, 1927, plate III. D26; also one published in Abu Ridho, Oriental Ceramics: The World’s Great Collections, vol. 3, Tokyo, 1982, pl. 203; and another example illustrated in Sekai Toji Zenshu: Ming, vol. 14, Tokyo, 1976, plates, 70-1, pp. 68-9; a further example is in the Nanjing Museum.
It is recorded in the Grand Gazetteer of Jiangxi Province: Volume VII that “blue and white boxes decorated with flowers, birds, and insects” were produced in the nineteenth year of the Wanli reign (1591), which corresponds to the decoration of the present lot.