18TH CENTURY

It is unusual to find a four-tiered food box, two or three layers being more common. Compare a zitan four-tiered box with incised and gilded metalwork, 17th century, illustrated by R.H. Ellsworth et al., Chinese Furniture: One Hundred Examples from the Mimi and Raymond Hung Collection, New York, 1996, pp. 226-227, no. 92. See, also, the a huanghuali four-tiered box with similar base and humpback handles sold in these rooms, Important Chinese Furniture, Formerly the Museum of Classical Chinese Furniture Collection, 19 September 1996, lot 3, and a pair of zitan three-tier boxes, lot 24. For a discussion of the picnic box form, see Wang Shixiang, Connoisseurship of Chinese Furniture: Ming and Early Qing Dynasties, Hong Kong, 1990, vol. I, p. 95-96.