WINTER EXHIBITION 2008 - Roger Keverne

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ROGER KEVERNE WINTER 2008 79
An unusual cloisonné enamel box
and cover
Kangxi period
Diameter: 2N in, 7.1 cm
with eight bracket lobes, straight sides
and a very slightly domed cover. The box
is decorated in dark green, yellow, tomatored,
lapis-blue and white enamels on a
turquoise ground with clouds and the Eight
Trigrams about a central yin–yang symbol
to the cover, and with clouds to the sides.
The rims, interior and base are gilt.
Formerly in a European private collection.
Illustrated: Spink & Son, The Minor Arts
of China, London, 1983, no. 74.
An identical box in the collection of the
Palace Museum, Beijing, is illustrated in
Zhongguo Meishu Fenlei Quanji: Zhongguo
Jinyin Boli Falangqi Quanji, Vol. 5,
no. 178, p. 150.
Note also a mid-sixteenth century box, with
a yin–yang symbol, in the Reid collection
and illustrated in Till and Swart, Antique
Chinese Cloisonné, no. 21.
62
An unusual bronze and cloisonné
enamel mirror
18th century
Height: 4D in, 10.8 cm
of rectangular form and decorated in
coloured enamels on a turquoise ground
with two archaistic monster masks and
scrolling about a plain domed bronze knop.
The reflective side is now a mellow coffeebrown
tone.
Cloisonné enamel mirrors are rare, but for
a circular example in the collection of the
National Palace Museum, Taipei, see Chen,
Enamel Ware in the Ming and Ch’ing
Dynasties, no. 51, p. 129.