"Lacquered Box Inlaid With Lapis Lazuli, Mother-of-pearl And Horn. China Ming Dynasty."
Very rare lacquered wooden box, inlay of the "hundred precious items" type. The decoration represents sages and animals in a landscape, antiquity and friezes of stylized dragons. The inlays are mainly in mother-of-pearl, but also in stone, steatite and above all a superb lapis lazuli of a rare blue stained with green, details are in sculpted cinnabar lacquer and also inlaid, others are in tinted bone and horn, and finally details are painted with gold powder. Chinese work from the Ming period. The box must have stayed in the humidity for a very long time and the lacquer is destroyed. There is little lack of encrustation. Major restoration work is to be expected but the rarity of the object justifies. 
Le Magazine de PROANTIC
TRÉSORS Magazine
Rivista Artiquariato
