Lot 53. A 'guri' lacquer box and cover, Yuan dynasty (1279-1366). Diameter 4 1/2  in., 11.4 cm. Estimate 20,000 — 30,000 USD. Lot Sold 47,500 USD. Photo: Sotheby's.

of circular section, the cover carved in fluid scrollwork revealing alternating layers of red, black, yellow and green lacquer, the sides similarly carved with scalloped partial scrolls, the countersunk base incised with a three-character mark 'Zhangcheng zao' (2).

Provenance: Alice Boney, New York. 
Ji Zhen Zhai Collection, until 2015.

Literature: Fang Jing Pei. Treasures of the Chinese Scholar, New York and Tokyo, 1997, fig. 147.

Note: Zhang Cheng is known from the Gegu yaolun [The Essential Criteria of Antiquities] by Cao Zhao of 1388. Few other known pieces bear the same Zhangcheng zao mark. Compare a shallow dish at the British Museum, illustrated in Harry Garner, Chinese Lacquer, London, 1979, pls 51-52; and a dish carved with gardenia in the Palace Museum, Beijing, illustrated in The Complete Collection of Treasures of the Palace Museum: Lacquer Wares of the Yuan and Ming Dynasties, Hong Kong, 2006, cat. no. 3. A box and cover with Zhang Cheng signature and a further inscription in phagspa, the Yuan official script, and thus firmly attributed to the Yuan dynasty, was included in the exhibition Two Thousand Years of Chinese Lacquer, The Oriental Ceramic Society of Hong Kong and the Art Gallery, the Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, 1993, cat. no. 34.