A RARE TIANQI AND QIANGJIN LACQUER PEACH-SHAPED BOX AND COVERLate 16th/early 17th century The slightly conical cover incised and decorated with a large writhing three-clawed dragon chasing a flaming pearl, the dragon with meticulously detailed scales and and mane, all amidst billowing ruyi -clouds, the box decorated with waves crashing against rocks, coral and peaches, the base incised and gilt with an apocryphal Wanli six-character mark, with Japanese shifuku textile cover 7.5cm (3in) diam. (3). 十六世紀晚期/十七世紀早期 戧金填漆雲龍紋桃式蓋盒 後加款:「大明萬曆年製」楷書款 Provenance: Stephen Junkunc III, (d.1978), Illinois 來源：史蒂芬•瓊肯三世舊藏（1978年逝），伊利諾伊州 The shape of the present lot is extremely rare but this form can be seen in a related carved three-colour lacquer peach-shaped box and cover, Jiajing six-character mark and of the period, decorated with two phoenix chasing a 'flaming pearl', illustrated in 2000 Years of Lacquer , Hong Kong, 1993, no.55, where it is noted that the peach form is synonymous with longevity and would therefore have particularly appealed to the Jiajing Emperor's obsession with the quest for immortality. Because of the auspicious connotations related to longevity, the present box may have been conceived as a gift tomemorate the birthday of its owner. Peaches are perhaps China's most auspicious fruit, symbolising longevity and happiness, and flowering peach branches are believed to ward off evil. The 'Classic of Poetry' Shi Jing , edited during the 5th century BC, mentions the peach as a metaphor for thriving marriage and family. In later times, the poet Tao Qian (365-427) wrote about a fisherman who discovered a paradisical world after following the source of a stream in a peach orchard, referred to as the 'Peach Blossom Spring' – through a crevice in a rock. A peach orchard is also the setting for the 'oath of brotherhood' sworn by the three main characters of the ' Romance of the Three Kingdoms '. Large 'peaches of immortality' were also believed to grow in the wondrous garden of the Queen Mother of the West: here, the trees flowered only once every three thousand years, took three thousand years to bear fruit and another three thousand to ripen, and the peaches were then offered in a banquet to the Immortals. The mischievous Monkey King Sun Wukong, protagonist of the novel ' Journey to the West ', stole the peaches of Immortality and was subsequently recruited by Guanyin to apany the Tang dynasty (618-907) monk Xuanzang on his trip to India to find the Buddhist sutras; see Chih-tsing Hsia, 'The Journey to the West', The Classic Chinese Novel , New York, 168, pp.115–164. See also a similar peach-shaped box, but in carved red lacquer, 15th century, illustrated in 2000 Years of Lacquer , Hong Kong, 1993, no.51.