of barrel shape with curved sides, the flat cover with a raised edge, painted in a bright underglaze blue and green, red, yellow and brown enamels and black details, showing on the cover and twice around the sides of the box a scene of two men in lively dancing poses among various leafy plants under a pine tree, dressed in flowing garments and fanciful hats and holding different fans, with a scroll border around the top and prunus blossoms on waves around the edge of the cover, key-fret around the rim and a lingzhi scroll around the base of the box, the reign mark inscribed on a recessed glazed area in the centre of the unglazed base.

Provenance: Sotheby's Hong Kong, 13th November 1990, lot 149.
Collection of T.T. Tsui, Jingguantang Collection.
Christie's London, 15th November 2000, lot 32.
J.J. Lally & Co, New York.

Literature: Sotheby's Hong Kong – Twenty Years, 1973-1993, Hong Kong, 1993, pl. 134.
Sotheby's. Thirty Years in Hong Kong, Hong Kong, 2003, pl. 177.
Regina Krahl, Chinese Ceramics from the Meiyintang Collection, London, 1994-2010, vol. 4, no. 1704..

Note: Barrel-shaped boxes of this type may have been used in pairs as containers for chess pieces, although related jars, generally with a recessed top, were also used as cricket cages..