Covered Tray

Low, rectangular box (a) with cover (b). Flange around the perimeter of base widens into a low foot at each corner. Convex sides of minute basketry covered with red-brown lacquer framed in black lacquer with fold fret pattern. Bottom black lacquer. Interior red lacquer. Top painted with an elaborate landscape scene of scholars at a lakeside mansion and garden done with litharge and lacquer colors and gold on a black lacquer ground.The top of this covered tray is decorated with a complex painting of palace buildings in a landscape setting, rendered in various colors and gold on a black lacquer ground. Inside the cover is an inscription reading Jie Ji, the name of a lacquer manufacturing studio. (Gallery Chat Label, 2005)Condition: extensive but inconsequential old abrasions of lacquer painting on the top.