A pair of Louis XV Chinese lacquer and Parisian varnish toilet boxes, circa 1730

Sotheby’s Paris, 14 May 2014, lot 132

Stéphane Castelluccio, in Les secrets de la laque française. Le vernis Martin, Paris, 2014 (pp. 19–20 and 123), analyzes the trade in lacquerware at the end of the seventeenth century. The importation of European‑shaped objects manufactured in China or Japan through the various East India Companies is well established. This pair of “toilet boxes” could be an example of this phenomenon, since the central decoration appears to be Chinese lacquer, whereas the surrounding elements seem to have been worked more in the French manner.