Small Box with Cover

This delicate round box once held aromatic incense. It is carved all over with flowering plum branches, set against an incised geometric background meant to suggest sky. By the beginning of the 1500s, repeating geometric patterns had found their way into carved lacquer featuring floral patterns. Certain families of geometric patterns were used to represent sky, water, and land. While land patterns were taken from geometric textile patterns, the open sky or air was often depicted with fine parallel horizontal striations like those seen here.