STUNNING C1840 CHINESE LACQUER TEA CADDY!!

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I bought this superb early nineteenth-century Chinese export tea caddy quite recently but my partner's growing collection of Art Deco is taking over our apartment and beautiful though it is, the caddy just doesn't fit, so....... Its previous owner was a dealer specializing in golden age Chinese export ware who said the caddy was produced in Canton in circa 1840 for export to the West. It is made of black lacquer - richly, lavishly and evocatively decorated across its top and sides with scenes of ceremonial - possibly courtly - tea-drinking, with exotic trees and ornamental pavilions in the background, each tableau surrounded by geometrical and floral patterning enclosed within a border of stylized, fern-like foliage. Exquisitely conceived and beautifully executed!! My inept photography cannot capture the detail and intricacy of the artist's work, completed in several shades of gold and emphasized with subtle accents of scarlet! The inside of the caddy reveals further gold foliage and a richly patterned inner lip. T is a single internal safe, possibly of pewter, intricately engraved with a courtly man and woman against a stylized oriental landscape of trees and mountains. The safe's knob is original and looks like bone. The caddy's measurements in inches are 8 1/2W by 4 1/2H by 6 1/4D. The caddy wears its 170-odd years lightly read more

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