The top of the cover finely painted in red on a black ground with three birds with long tail feathers and crests running within red and angular scroll borders, with similar borders on the sides and sides of the box, with similar birds painted in black on a red ground on the interior of the cover and box; together with a rare blackish-brown lacquered wood fragment, Eastern Zhou dynasty, the convex side carved in relief with scrolls and lacquered.

Provenance: Box and cover: John Hadley Cox Collection, Washington.
J.T. Tai & Co., New York, 1975. 
Fragment: J.T. Tai & Co., New York, 1965.

Literature: Box and cover: L. Sickman and A. Soper, The Art and Architecture of China, Baltimore, Maryland, 1956, pl. 12(A).
R. Krahl, 'Design on Early Chinese Textiles', Orientations, August 1989, pp. 62-73, ill. p. 63.

Christie's. Property from the Arthur M. Sackler Collections, 24 March 2011, New York, Rockefeller Plaza