A CARVED IVORY MELON-SHAPED 'EROTIC' BOX AND COVER QING DYNASTY, 18TH CENTURY |

carved in openwork in the form of an elongated melon attached to a gnarled stalk wreathed in furled leaves and curling tendrils, accompanied by an attendant fruit and blossom and two small insects clambering on its lobed sides, the box opening to reveal two erotic scenes enclosed in the parted sections, each depicting a couple engaged in amorous positions, either on a daybed or on a large sheet thrown on the floor, the ivory patinated to a warm cream-yellow colour with faint pigmented details on the carved scenes

Two boxes of this type were sold in our London rooms, 4th November 2009, lot 170, and 17th December 1996, lot 211; and another, but with the interior carved with a river scene in the base and a bird in a blossoming prunus tree in the cover, sold in our New York rooms, 23rd September 1995, lot 308. Compare a similarly fashioned carving of a melon in the National Palace Museum, Taipei, illustrated in Jiangxiu yu xiangong Ming Qing diaoke zhan. Xiangya xijiao pian/Uncanny Ingenuity and Celestial Feasts, the Carving of Ming and Qing Dynasties: The Art of Ivory and Rhinoceros Horn Carving, Taipei, 2009, pl. 3. A further example of an ivory melon-shaped box with insects crawling on the surface and revealing a hidden scene inside is published in Craig Clunas, Chinese Ivories from the Shang to the Qing, London, 1984, p. 48, no. 189.