A Small Transitional Porcelain Box and Cover From The Hatcher Cargo.

A Small Transitional Porcelain Box and Cover From the Hatcher Cargo, Late Ming, Chongzhen Period c.1643. The small circular shipwreck porcelain box and cover is decorated with over lapping waves with a single open prunus flower to the top. The design is almost hidden because the painting is added to a cobalt blue ground of an almost identical tone. You need a strong light to reveal the decoration. Teresa Canepa in her excellent book Jingdezhen to the World: The Lurie Collection of Chinese Export Porcelain from the Late Ming Dynasty. She quotes an example a of late Ming porcelain box and cover with the same design, as well as approximately the same size, that come from early an important early English of Chinese and Japanese porcelain collection at Burghley House in Lincolnshire. Teresa Canepa mentions a further example which is in the Royal Collection Trust. I think these boxes were made with for fairly local export, perhaps Indonesia. However, these are commercial products, and if merchants from other countries wanted to buy them, that was just good business for the seller. SOLD See Below For More Photographs and Information