Lot 3643. A carved cinnabar lacquer 'Shoulao and Xiwangmu' box and cover, Mark and period of Qianlong (1736-1795); 28.8 cm. Lot sold 504,000 HKD (Estimate : 400,000 - 600,000 HKD). © Sotheby's 2022

the interior of the cover gilt-incised with Yaochi baohe ('precious box of the Jasper Pool').

Provenance: Collection of Mary Ritchie Bennett Fox, New Jersey, gifted in 1900 by Charles Boone, United States Navy, and thence by direct descent.

Note: Compare a similar box and cover in the National Palace Museum, Taipei, illustrated in Masterpieces of Chinese Carved Lacquerware in the National Palace Museum, Taipei, 1971, pl. 44. See also two related boxes and covers, the first in the Buckingham Palace, London, similarly carved with Shoulao and Xiwangmu but also the Eight Immortals, further decorated with the babao panels on a similar ground with key-fret borders, illustrated in John Ayers, Chinese and Japanese Works of Art in the Collection of Her Majesty the Queen, vol. III, London, 1959, p. 851, and the other in the National Museum of Denmark, Copenhagen, carved with a similar medallion and borders, illustrated in Joan Hornby, Chinese Lacquerware in the National Museum of Denmark, Denmark, 2012, cat. no. 29.

Sotheby's. Important Chinese Art including Jades from the De An Tang Collection and Gardens of Pleasure – Erotic Art from the Bertholet Collection, Hong Kong, 29 April 2022