Beschreibung:

Details
A RARE PAIR OF QIANGJIN ENGRAVED AND GILT-DECORATED RED-LACQUERED WOOD SUTRA COVERS
YONGLE PERIOD (1403-1425)
The reverse of one cover has a long inscription in Tibetan and Chinese enclosed within a large lotus-petal cartouche.
Each 28 3/4 in. (73.1 cm.) long
Provenance
Acquired by the current owner in the early 1990s.
Post lot text
The present set of covers were made for the sutra Dasheng Fawang jing, one of the 108 volumes of the BKa-gyur, a sacred text representing the word of the Buddha. According to Dr Peter Lam in Layered Beauty, Hong Kong, 2010, p. 54, two sets of BKa-gyur were bestowed sequentially by the Emperor Yongle to two Buddhist abbots from Tibet in 1413 and 1416, now preserved at the Potala Palace and the Sera Monastery in Lhasa, respectively.
A similar set of covers, once in the same collection as the current pair is dated c. 1410, published by J.C.Y. Watt and B.B. Ford, East Asian Lacquer: The Florence and Herbert Irving Collection, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1991, pp. 116 and 117. (Fig. 1) The authors note that these lacquered covers provide the earliest examples of Ming-style qiangjin work. A further set is illustrated by R.D. Jacobsen, Appreciating China, Minneapolis Institute of Arts, 2002, no. 48. For other similar covers sold at auctions, see a set from the Lee Family Collection, sold at Christie’s Hong Kong, Important Chinese Lacquer from the Lee Family Collection, Part II, 1 December 2009, lot 1821; an inscribed pair sold at Christie’s Hong Kong, 28 November 2012, lot 2260; a set from the Baoyizhai Collection, sold at Sotheby’s Hong Kong, 8 April 2014, lot 38; a single back cover sold at Christie’s Hong Kong, 31 May 2017, lot 2816; and most recently a single cover sold at Christie’s Hong Kong, 29 November 2022, lot 3021.