Square Covered Box with Hundred Antiquities (1723–35): Art, History and Details

Square Covered Box with Hundred Antiquities (1723–35) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

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

The painted decoration on the cover that pairs with this base provides an interesting image of the antiquities and objects being collected in the Chinese scholar’s desk—all of which are emblems of taste, status, and affluence. Connoisseurship, art cataloguing, art historical study, and elegant social gatherings developed alongside art collecting as part of the Chinese literati culture.

Object facts

• Title: Square Covered Box with Hundred Antiquities
• Date: 1723–35
• Culture: China, Jiangxi province, Jingdezhen kilns, Qing dynasty (1644-1911), Yongzheng mark and reign (1723-35)
• Type: Ceramic
• Technique: porcelain with famille rose overglaze enamel decoration
• Dimensions: Overall: 4 x 7.5 cm (1 9/16 x 2 15/16 in.)
• Collection: China - Qing Dynasty
• Department: Chinese Art
• Accession number: 1989.309.a

A detail from the museum

An auspicious lingzhi mushroom was painted on the base.

Collection credit

Bequest of Mrs. Severance A. Millikin

Further reading listed by the museum

• Catalogue of the Severance and Greta Millikin Collection. Cleveland, OH: Cleveland Museum of Art, 1990.

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.