Blue and white box

While out garage selling again I came across this blue and white box.

The box was covered with a ton of dirt and the woman said it had been wrapped in newspaper and left in a box sinse her grandfather had bought it.

The box is heavy it weighs 2 1/4 lbs. This box stands at 2 3/4" high and is 7 3/4" long with a depth of 4".

19th to 20th century Comb's box

I can't tell you much about this box more than that the type is called "comb's box" and that the shape appears since at least Ming dynasty, Wanli period. Now, this one appears to be a few years later than that.

On the inside of the lid there is a Qianlong mark, which does not have very much to do with the box, and it should not be there on a piece like this anyway.

The box with its traditional export decoration do looks like a late 19th century piece, but somehow I don't get the right feeling for that either.

If you look at the border of the lid, at the middle of the lids length you can see that some of the lines are unlike - more separated - then the rest. This tells us the painter had some help doing the rest of the border and seems to, just had to do this small "fixing together" by hand. This is not very "Chinese" in character, since the Chinese seems to have hand painted almost everything. So, my best guess on this one is - "pretty recent".

Most dealers would sell this as "19th century" and let it go at that. It is quite hard to argue against. As a collector and the Internet porcelain curmudgeon I like to try to do that anyway, and would have put this one on the shelf for "mid 20th century" and added a question mark "until further notice".

Thank you for your interest.

Best regards,
Jan-Erik Nilsson