1-233-793 - The Museum of East Asian Art/Heritage Images

Bronze seal paste box with silver inlays, Ming dynasty, China, 16th century. A silver inlaid bronze square seal paste box. The top is decorated with a rebus of a monkey in a peach tree, deer, magpie and bees, a rebus meaning 'May you become a marquis'. The sides are decorated with silver swastika diaper inlay, each side with silver inlaid rectangular pictures with indented corners conveying other wishes for good fortune as follows: (i) a heron and a duck in a lotus pond, (ii) two peacocks on a peony, (iii) a hawk in a pine tree with a bird in a flight above a hound, (iv) two birds in a prunus tree.