Cer, China, Qing, blue and white

A circular box and cover with short straight sides and a flat top, painted in underglaze blue. The scene on the cover is one of the twenty four examples of filial piety. According to legend Lao Laizi, a man from the Spring and Autumn period (770-476 BC) living in the State of Chu, was seventy years old yet his parents were still alive, and he often wore five-coloured clothes to amuse them. Here the parents are shown seated in a garden, and Lao Laizi is carrying a package, probably meant to represent a lute. The sides of the box are painted with a mountainous landscape. Vermilion had accumulated round the rims of both box and cover, now turned brown. On the base is an inscription neatly arranged in five vertical lines:
Outside the Zhengyang Gate of the Capital, at the Great Barrier, north end of the Xitou Road, the Fragant Cloud Chamber, a shop for perfume goods and prepared medicines.
A modern map of the Beijing city would show that the Zhengyang Gate is now called the 'Qianmen' (Front Gate), as it stands in front of Tiananmen. However the Dazhalan (Great Barrier) has retained not only its name but also some of the medicine shops. Nagel's Encyclopedia-Guide on China says:
From the early years of the Qing dynasty Dazhalan has been a street known for its shops and entertainments ..... Several old shops survive, among them a chemist's shop which was opened in 1669.
That chemist's shop might or might not be the Fragant Cloud Chamber, but the present box and cover was certainly a container for precious medicine, and is a valuable example of early advertising. Such boxes would have been ordered in fairly large quantities, yet they should have been reasonably inexpensive so as not to add too much to the cost of the goods they contained.
It is gratifying to have a piece of physical evidence that matches historical record so well.

D. Bushell Gift

This circular box is a valuable example of early advertising in China in the 19th century. The inscription says that it belonged to the Fragant Cloud Chamber, a shop that sold perfume goods and prepared medicines outside Zhengyang Gate, Beijing. (The Zhengyang Gate is now called the 'Front Gate', as it stands in front of Tiananmen Square.) Shop owners would have ordered fairly large quantities of such boxes. They were probably reasonably inexpensive so as not to add too much to the cost of the goods they contained.

FE.120&A-1975