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PROPERTY FROM VARIOUS OWNERS
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A RARE CLOISONNÉ ENAMELED CIRCULAR BOX AND COVER A near identical cloisonné enamel box and cover dated to the
Ming Dynasty, 1450-1550 mid-fifteenth century on loan to the Metropolitan Museum of Art
With a very gently domed cover exquisitely enameled with two large as Promised Gift of Clara and Theodore Wang is illustrated on the
yellow musk mallow blossoms, huang shukui with turquoise, green and museum's website, accession number L.2022.23a-c.
autumnal serrated palmette leaves each with five narrow leaflets, set
against a dark midnight blue ground, the almost vertical sides of the For a discussion of the dating of a very similarly decorated meiping in
box, and the cover, very lightly convex in profile and decorated with the Musée des Arts Decoratifs, Paris, with comparable yellow musk
full-faced lotus flowerheads alternately white, yellow, and blue divided mallow flowers, though with wider palmette leaves, also set against
by buds and scrolls set against a turquoise ground bordered by gilt a dark midnight blue ground and with clearly visible thin gilt wire leafy
copper bands, the flat base of the box fully decorated to compliment foliage throughout the design, see Béatrice Quette (Ed.), Cloisonné,
the cover, with fruiting grapevine, putao, with naturalistic veined leaves Chinese Enamels from the Yuan, Ming and Qing Dynasties, Bard
in dark green towards the center and autumnal yellow, green and red- Graduate Center, New York, 2011, pp. 36, 109, and 234, fig. 3.9.;
tinged leaves toward the edges, the clusters of fruit in black enamel, fig. 6.9.; no. 21 respectively. It is dated to the early Ming dynasty
the plain interiors of the box and cover gilt. based on its similarity with other meiping forms with similar decoration
6 3/4in (17.1cm) diam in the Victoria and Albert Museum and the Pierre Uldry collection,
and comparable compositions on blue and white ceramics of the
$100,000 - 150,000 late Yuan and early Ming dynasties. Interestingly almost fifty years
earlier, Sir Harry Garner published the same vase, in his classic work,
明 1450-1550 年 嵌絲琺瑯秋葵葡萄紋盒 Chinese & Japanese Cloisonné Enamels, London, 1962, p. 75, pl.
44A, but attributed its production to the first half of the sixteenth
century. However, Garner also illustrated a circular box and cover with
grapevine and grape clusters from Fenton House, London, National
Trust, UK that is dated to the second half of the fifteenth century, that
like our example has a band of stylized running lotus to the sides.

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