A small chest or box for writing implements with lid, probably made from anjily wood (Artocarpus spp.) coated in Southeast Asian black lacquer, or thitsi, and leaf gilded on the exterior faces and on the inside of the lid, while the internal sides are coated with cinnabar-red lacquer.

With a top lid and raised on a socle, it has an internal nook with lid next to the right side that is also used to store writing implements.

The escutcheon, in gilded wrought iron not unlike the other fittings other, has an overall square shape with the upper section waved in the shape of a two-headed eagle, while the "T"-shaped latch is typical of this sixteenth-century production; the top handle is reminiscent those found in Far Eastern furniture.

Every exterior face except for the underside is decorated, the field carved in low-relief highlighted with gold, with scrolls of leaves and flowers, and the flat edges with foliage in gold leaf over the black lacquered ground, a typical Burmese and Thai lacquering technique (shwei-zawa and lai rod nam, respectively), a decoration of which, apart from the front and back, little survives.

The inner side of the flat lid is decorated with a floral composition, featuring a large stylized lotus flower in the centre, which, not unlike the vegetal frieze bordering it, was made using the same leaf gilding technique.

Our small writing chest belongs to a group of lacquered pieces known as Luso-Asian lacquerware that has defied a consensual identification of its place of production and which, being diverse in their character, may be divided in two groups.

The first group, to which the present writing chest belongs, has been recently identified as Burmese in origin, therefore made in the Kingdom of Pegu, in the south of present-day Myanmar.[1]

Hugo Miguel Crespo

Bibliography:

Hugo Miguel Crespo, Choices, Lisboa, AR-PAB, 2016.

[1] See Hugo Miguel Crespo, Choices, Lisboa, AR-PAB, 2016, pp. 238-261, cat. no. 22.