Pair of Mongolian Yak Butter Containers, c. 1900

A petite bronze canister once used to store a smoker's personal supply of opium paste. A keepsake from a bygone era, the small box dates to the early 20th century and provided an air...

Designed to resemble a scroll-form altar table, this narrow footed box has an elegant silhouette with waterfall sides and minimal ornamentation. Dated to the late 19th century, the b...

No self-respecting man in Qing-dynasty China would leave the house without some kind of hat. In fact, headgear was so central to social status that even the containers used to store ...

This finely painted box was once presented as a gift, filled with popular snacks like roasted melon seeds, dried fruit, and cinnamon-toasted soy beans. Used like a modern lunchbox, e...

Large Teak Jewelry Dowry Box with Brass, Late 19th Century, India. Indian Dowry Box in Lacquered Teak with Decorative Brass. This large Ethnic Indian ...

Exquisite handcrafted white mother of pearl inlaid and hand carved lidded box. Small octagonal Anglo Indian decorative box intricately decorated with Moorish motif designs which hav...

An exceptional Indo-Portuguese colonial mother-of-pearl veneered casket with silver mounts India, Gujarat, 2nd half of the 16th century, the silver mounts Goa or probably Lisbon Measures: H. 16 x W. 24.6 x D. 16.1 cm An exceptional Gujarati casket with a rectangular box and truncated pyramidal lid (with slopes on each side and a flat top) made from exotic wood, probably teak (Tectona grandis), covered with a mother-of-pearl mosaic. The tesserae, cut from the shell of the green turban sea snail (Turbo marmoratus, a marine gastropod) in the shape of fish scales, are pinned to the wooden structure with silver ball-headed nails. The casket is set on bracket feet on the corners. The masterfully engraved decoration of the silver mounts follows the most refined and erudite Mannerist repertoire of rinceaux and ferroneries dating from the mid-16th century. The high quality and refinement of the silver mounts and, likewise, the silver nails that replaced the original brass pins used to hold the mother-of-pearl tesserae in place indicate the work of a silversmith probably working in Lisbon in the second half of the 16th century. The Indian origin of this production, namely from Cambay (Khambhat) and Surat in the present state of Gujarat in north India, is, as for the last three decades, consensual and fully demonstrated, not only by documentary and literary evidence - such as descriptions, travelogues and contemporary archival documentation - but also by the survival in situ of 16th-century wooden structures covered in mother-of-pearl tesserae. A fine example is a canopy decorating the tomb (dargah) of the Sufi saint, Sheik Salim Chisti (1478-1572) in Fatehpur Sikri in Agra district in the state of Uttar Pradesh, north India. This is an artistic production, geometric in character and Islamic in nature, where usually the mother-of-pearl tesserae form complex designs of fish scales or, similar to the dishes also made using the same technique, with the thin brass sheets and pins, stylized lotus flowers. The truncated pyramidal shape corresponds, like their contemporary tortoiseshell counterparts also made in Gujarat, to a piece of furniture used in the Indian subcontinent within the Islamic world prior to the arrival of the first Portuguese. This shape, in fact, is very old and peculiar to East-Asian caskets, chests or boxes used to contain and protect Buddhist texts, the sutras. A similar chest is the famous and large reliquary chest from Lisbon cathedral that once contained the relics of the city's patron saint, Saint Vincent. Both match in shape, having the same kind of socle or pedestal and bracket feet, and in their engraved silver mountings, featuring the same type of refined, erudite decoration. Their differences lie in the silver borders that frame the entire length of the edges of the chest (both the box and the lid), pinned with silver nails, and on the lock plate, shaped like a coat of arms in the Lisbon example. Given the exceptional dimensions of the reliquary casket...

A fine Indo-Portuguese inlaid teak wood figure of Nagini India, Goa, 17th century Measure: H. 55 cm (with stand, and with ring for wall hanging) The sculpture can be perceived as such but probably is one of four legs of an Indo-Portuguese contador...