Late Yuan or early Ming period red lacquer box and cover, $17,000 (£14,000) at Helmuth Stone.
Described as ‘exquisitely carved but with a significant break and loss to the side’, it was estimated at $200-400 but hammered for $17,000 (£14,000) in Sarasota, Florida.
This rare box is one of a distinct group of carved lacquer pieces decorated with insects and reptiles amid pine, bamboo and plum blossoms - the so-called Three Friends of Winter that continue to thrive as the cold days deepen.
According to the features listed by the collector and scholar Sir Harry Mason Garner in Chinese Lacquer (1979), the unworked dark background is one typically associated with earlier carved lacquers from the late Yuan and early Ming period, with this design - probably based on Southern Song dynasty prototype - associated with Yunnan in southwestern China.
In better condition it could have made six figures.
The sale took place on September 24.
