Chinese Wedding Box with Blossoms & Dragon Flies Motif

Painted lotus flowers and little birds bloom on a plain wooden box.

This wedding box with blossoms & dragon flies motif is from Heilongjiang Province, China, and dates to the 19th century. It is lacquered & painted pine wood. Tibetans were traditionally semi-nomadic and owned few personal furnishings, so most Tibetan furniture stood in monasteries, and some of it was carted over the Himalayas to India as monasteries were destroyed. Squared chest with a flat lid and warm orange-brown wood. A large painted spray of pink lotus and green leaves sits on the front, with small birds among the stems. The paint shows light rubbing. It is 31.5 inches long, 21 deep and 22 high.

A garden painted on a box, and kept tidy.