Round Box with Bird and Peonies Design (c. 1300): Art, History and Details

Round Box with Bird and Peonies Design (c. 1300) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

The carved lacquer box and lobed silver container nearby both feature pairs of birds and flowers on their covers. There is a striking similarity in decoration, shape, and aesthetic appeal. Both boxes suggest that successful designs and shapes circulated among craftsmen, workshops, and beyond regional borders.

Object facts

• Title: Round Box with Bird and Peonies Design
• Date: c. 1300
• Culture: China, late Southern Song (1127–1279) to early Yuan dynasty (1271–1368)
• Type: Lacquer
• Technique: carved lacquer
• Dimensions: Overall: 21 x 40.6 cm (8 1/4 x 16 in.); Lid: 8.5 x 40.6 cm (3 3/8 x 16 in.); Bottom: 12.5 x 40.6 cm (4 15/16 x 16 in.)
• Collection: China - Song Dynasty
• Department: Chinese Art
• Accession number: 2011.34.a

A detail from the museum

To allow for the depth of carving, numerous layers of different colored lacquer were applied to a core of wood strengthened by a fabric covering impregnated with lacquer.

Collection credit

Leonard C. Hanna Jr. Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Garner, Harry Mason. Chinese Lacquer. London: Faber, 1979.
• Tokugawa Bijutsukan 徳川美術館, and Nezu Bijutsukan 根津美術館. Chōshitsu: urushi no rerīfu [彫漆 : うるしのレリーフ = Carved lacquer]. [Nagoya-shi]: Tokugawa Bijutsukan, 1984.
• Watt, James C. Y., and Barbara Brennan Ford. East Asian Lacquer: The Florence and Herbert Irving Collection. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1991.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.