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(duobao ge). The cabinets were often small enough to carry with two hands while others

were large enough to be placed on a table. The boxes were equipped with drawers, often

dozens of drawers, some undiscoverable by any but the owner. In the drawers were

miniature objects: jades, ivories, cloisonnés, stones, jewels, pens, and small inkstones.

Each was held in its own customized container within a larger cabinet. The set could be

opened and spread over the expanse of a good-sized rug, or folded together and slipped

under a chaise pillow. The cabinets had a precedent in the Ming dynasty, when scholars

used such differentiated and multi-level boxes to transport actual writing implements

necessary for study and writing such as full-sized pens, paper, inkstones, not unlike a

handheld toolkit for a scholar. During the Qing period however, the transportable boxes

underwent some specific changes, not the least of which was the increased favor for

duobao ge at the imperial court. This description of the diversity and completeness of

Qing “cabinets of multiple treasures” certainly hark the European curiosity cabinets of

the sixteenth through early eighteenth centuries, where natural and cultural oddities were

concentrated for classification, stratification, and the general purpose of defining

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exotica.
As an exercise in collecting and containing universality, the Qing duobao ge were

an extension of the Qing imperial ideology. As Philippe Foret and Pamela Crossley have

pointed out, in the realms of art and landscape architecture, the reproduction of complete,

albeit miniaturized worlds dominated Qing court aesthetic productions. One example

would be as the imperial summer retreat grounds at Rehol, referred to as the Bishu

shanzhuang (Villa to Escape the Heat). These curio boxes were no different. Just as

European curiosity cabinets conveyed an impulse to know the world, so were the Qing