Sunday 3 July 2011

Chinese porcelain box

This Chinese porcelain box has been handmade to a standard pattern. Cobalt blue underglaze decoration. Probably of 19th Century manufacture. Outside dimensions: 120mm x 90mm x 50mm.


The colours of the decoration on the lid and the body are slightly different. This is not unusual. It is quite likely that the lids and bodies of these boxes were crafted independently and then matched up before sale. In this example, the lid is a pretty good fit to the body.



On the lid of the box is a depiction of a bat. The Chinese bat is an ever popular motif representing good fortune, and consequently, it is often found on Chinese swords.....but this particular bat is quite unusual in that it has large googly eyes. Big, staring eyes like these, are more usually encountered on Chinese dragons.



The overall shape of this creature is quite bat-like. Significant features which identify this as a bat include the scalloped wings,  the cloud shaped tail and the cloud hooks at the wing tips. The bats snout and body are depicted by a row of short arcs.




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1 comment:

  1. Scott Shangguan18 July 2011 at 08:15

    Nice seal box. I have a few of these. They came in a lot of different sizes and you are right, the decoration was pretty standard. It would have held red ink impregnated cotton that would have been used to ink up seals to sign things. I use mine.

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