A SUPERB AND VERY RARE CLOISONNE ENAMEL BOX AND COVER MING DYNASTY, XUANDE PERIOD

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of circular shape, decorated in a brilliant palette of iron-red, dark green, white, yellow, and lapis-blue on a turquoise ground, the shallow vertical sides of the cover formed by six shallow bracket lobes, rising to the flat top in six corresponding, gently rounded lotus petal panels, the shape of the base reflecting the shape of the cover, the panels all outlined with gilt-bronze banding and the flat base and interior undecorated, the flat top of the cover decorated with a large central lotus flowerhead surrounded by scrolling lotus, the twelve panels of the domed sides of both sections decorated with lotus sprigs and the panels of the vertical sides each enclosing a multi-coloured 'S'-scroll motif



 

Acquired in France in 1973 from the private collection of a dealer.

It is extremely rare to find Ming cloisonne boxes of this elegant octagonal lobed form. The shape is after Yuan and early Ming metalwork and can be more commonly found in mediums such as lacquer and ceramics. A blue and white tiered box of this form exhibited on loan at  the Princessehof Museum, Leeuwarden, and offered in our London rooms, 12th December 1978, lot 378, is discussed by Margaret Medley ' A Fourteenth Century Blue and White Chinese Box', Oriental Art, Winter 1973, vol. XIX, no. 4, pp. 433-437, where she dates it to the mid-fourteenth century. Medley also illustrates the silver box from the Hefei hoard, which include a vase dated to A.D. 1333, and the tiered lacquer box from the tomb of Ren Renfa, dated to before 1351, both of the same barbed form, and compares the construction to that of the tiered bow-lobed silver box from the tomb of Lady Cao, who died in 1365. Another lobed blue and white box painted with figures from the Oppenheim collection and now in the British Museum, London, is illustrated in R.L. Hobson and A.L. Hetherington, The Art of the Chinese Potter, London, 1923, pl. CXLVI, fig. 1.

Compare also a lacquer box of similar shape, excavated at Jiangyang and now in the Suzhou Museumm, with a cyclical date corresponding to 1405 inscribed on the base, illustrated in Sir Harry Garner, Chinese Lacquer, London, 1979, pls. 106 and 107, together with a related foliated box, in the British Museum, col. pl. E.

In its shape this box is also reminiscent of blue and white barbed cupstands of the Hongwu period. See a cupstand included in the Oriental Ceramic Society of Hong Kong exhibition Jingdezhen Wares. The Yuan Evolution, The University of Hong Kong, 1984, cat.no. 141; and another from the collection of Gerald Reitlinger in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, included in the museum's exhibition Eastern Ceramics, Oxford, 1981, cat.no. 1.

For examples of early Ming circular cloisonné boxes see one from the Kitson collection included in the Oriental Ceramic Society exhibition The Arts of the Ming Dynasty, London, 1957, cat.no. 316, sold in our London rooms, 21st February 1961, lot 277; and another box sold at Christie's London, 16th December 1996, lot 126.