Tray

This tray is remarkable both for its use of twisted brass wire (tarnished and now difficult to see) along both edges of the side walls and for its unusual design rendered in shell. Use of shell to decorate lacquer ware has a long history, but complex pictorial designs such as this arose in the fourteenth century when artisans learned to fully exploit the luster and iridescence of thin pieces of shell. While some scholars think this tray dates to the fourteenth century, it seems more likely, especially because of the use of brass wire, to be a fifteenth-century work.

Inlaid lacquer was highly sought after during the Ming dynasty despite the fact that some texts decried it as too ornate to be tasteful. A landscape scene like this could have been used in a scholar's study and the tray might have sat on a desk to hold a small handscroll or sundry objects.

The details of the design include a pierced garden rock incised with two mandarin ducks (near the rock's base) and a dragonfly near the top.  A recumbent animal, probably a wild hare, sits near the base of the rock, but the inlay that formed his head has been lost. Some pieces of shell are later repairs, but much of the original design is intact.