Page 306 - Bonhams Fine Chinese Art Nov 2013 London

Various Owners 各方藏家

299 The large box is well carved on the cover probably illustrating an
A rare cinnabar lacquer rectangular box and episode from the life of Kong Rong (153-208 AD), a statesman and
cover scholar who lived towards the end of the Han Dynasty. He was noted
Late Ming Dynasty, 16th/17th century for his biting wit, and once mocked the Chancellor Cao Cao (155-
The cover smoothly carved with a scholarly scene of a visiting 220 AD) in public. For humiliating Cao Cao several times, Kong Rong
general dismounted from his horse approaching a group of two was put to death on various charges.
scholars playing chess observed by another figure with a ruyi sceptre
and a boy attendant near a recumbent deer and duck, while a further According to the historical records, Kong Rong was playing weiqi
figure with a fly-whisk peeks from behind a rocky outcrop, all within with his children when he was arrested. When others urged him to
a grove of pines with unusually whorled needles and other trees, the escape he answered “How could there be unbroken eggs under a
sides of the cover and box carved with birds perching and flying amid toppled nest? 安有巢毀而卵不破者乎?” By this Kong Rong meant
flowering branches, the interior lacquered black. that when a group suffers, all individuals belonging to it will be
25.5cm (10in) long (2). affected. This box therefore would have illustrated the importance of
£50,000 - 80,000 family union.
HK$620,000 - 1,000,000 CNY490,000 - 790,000
明晚期十六/十七世紀 剔紅人物故事圖長方蓋盒 Compare a related box and cover, late Ming Dynasty, from the
Qing Court Collection, illustrated in The Complete Collection of
Treasures of the Palace Museum: Lacquer Wares of the Yuan and
Ming Dynasties, Beijing, 2006, pl.196; and see also a slightly smaller
rectangular lacquer box and cover, 16th century, illustrated in P.Frick,
Chinesische Lackkunst, Münster, 2010, pl.23.

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