A CINNABAR RED, BLACK AND YELLOW-GROUND LACQUER RECTANGULAR TWO-TIERED BOX AND COVER
Ming dynasty, 16th/17th century
Carved in the late Yuan or early Ming tradition through red and black layers in high relief to a ground of yellow lacquer with a descending phoenix on a dense peony ground to the cover, the sides of the box and cover carved with three graduated panels of peony scrolls, the lowest and widest tier with integral shaped apron and feet, the interiors and base lacquered in black; wood stand, Japanese box.
3 3/4 x 3 1/4 x 3 1/4in (9.5 x 8.2 x 8.2cm)
Footnotes:
明 剔彩鳳凰牡丹兩撞長方蓋盒

For a discussion of lacquer carved in the fourteenth-century style but attributed to the sixteenth or seventeenth centuries, see Sir Harry Garner, Chinese Lacquer, Worcester and London, 1979, pp. 106-111, figs. 47 and 48. Like ours both are carved in a bright red lacquer down to a buff ground, and similarly the thickness of the lacquer on the two illustrated by Garner, is much less than that associated with the fourteenth-century and imperial early fifteenth-century dishes and boxes.

For another example of a red lacquer square tiered box also decorated with birds and flowers and dated to the sixteenth-seventeenth century, see Karamano, Imported Lacquerwork, Chinese Korean and Ryukyuan - Selections from the Tokugawa Art Museum, No. 2, Japan, 1997, pp. 27, no. 31.