Freely decorated with four mythical animals in a landscape with pines between a coin diaper and a lotus border. One short firing crack.

The usage of these drum-shaped boxes is still not fully understood. While some were probably made as cricket cages, others may have been used by the Wanli emperor as containers for chess pieces. See the article by Li Baoping published on www.alaintruong.com, 23.9.2016.
Provenance: Freiherr von Follinus collection, Budapest, 1925. Private collection from Northern Europe.
Compare: Sotheby's Hongkong, 5 October 2016, lot 110. And: Collection of Iver Munthe Daae, Sotheby’s Hong Kong, 1st November 1994, lot 54.
A similar box and cover in the Shanghai Museum is illustrated in Chugoku Toji Zenshu,Vol.21,Kyoto,1981,Catalogue no.41. Another wucai box of this type, and without its cover, in the Metropolitan Museum, New York is illustrated by S.G. Valenstein. The Herzman Collection of Chinese Ceramics, New York, 1992, Catalogue no.85.