Lot 52. A black and red lacquer box, cover and tray, Yuan dynasty, 14th century. Height 7 in., 18 cm. Estimate 4,000 — 6,000 USD. Lot Sold 8,125 USD. Photo: Sotheby's.

the black-lacquer exterior of the box and cover lobed and applied with pewter wire to resemble ten lotus petals, the flat foliated top with concentric pewter-wire bands originally holding a mother-of-pearl medallion at the center, fitted with a black-lacquer tray, the interior of the box, cover, and tray lacquered red (3).

Note: Lacquer boxes with interior trays and compartments date to at least the Han dynasty, and were typically used to hold cosmetics and other personal articles. A nearly identical Yuan period box and cover in the Royal Ontario Museum is illustrated in Homage to Heaven, Homage to Earth, Chinese Treasures of the Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto, 1992, cat. no. 115. A box of this type, but with the mother-of-pearl medallion, in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art is included in James C. Y. Watt and Barbara Brennan Ford, East Asian Lacquer: The Florence and Herbert Irving Collection, New York, 1991, pl. 3. A closely related box and cover sold at Christie's Paris, 22nd November 2005, lot 83.