清十八世紀 牙雕外瓜蟲內春宮蓋盒 |

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.