The practice of inlaying lacquer with mother-of-pearl experienced a revival in China in the second half of the seventeenth century. The five distinct geometric patterns on this box, composed from extraordinarily small, thin fragments of pearl shell, illustrate the refinement of a technique first developed in the late fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. After the shell was boiled and the iridescent layers separated out, minute pieces such as the ones seen here could be culled and inlaid into a lacquer surface. Fragments of pearl shell were sometimes tinted to enhance natural colors such as pink and green.
