96. RARE PETITE BOÎTE À INCENS COUVERTE EN GRÈS YIXING Signé Chen Mingyuan A RARE YIXING INCENSE BOX AND COVER Signed Chen Mingyuan Finely and naturalistically modelled as a tortoise, the domed cover formed as the carapace, the shallow body with four legs, the head stretched out on one side, and the short tail on the other, with a four-character seal mark Chen Mingyuan zhi impressed on the underside of the body. 14cm (5 1/2in) long. (2). 陳鳴遠款 宜興紫砂龜式香盒 Provenance: Wilde collection, Hamburg, acquired by the grandfather in China between 1908 and 1914, acquired from his estate 來源： 漢堡Wilde珍藏，其祖父於1908年至1914年間得自中國 現藏家得自上述來源 Chen Mingyuan was one of the leading and most versatile potters active during the late Kangxi (1662-1722) and Yongzheng (1723-35) periods. He was trained by his father Chen Ziqi, himself a distinguished 17th century potter, and is best known for his small, often naturalistically and highly realistically rendered objects in the form of fruit, vegetables or animals made for the appreciation of erudite scholars. Compare this small figure of a tortoise with another naturalistically modelled figure of a tortoise signed Chen Ziqi, in the collection of the Chang Foundation, Taipei, illustrated in Yixing Teapots, Taipei, 1990, no.64. While Chen Mingyuan used many different seals, the seal closest to the one on the base of this censer can be found on the base of an archaistic censer in the form of a fang ding, sold in Sotheby's Hong Kong, 24 May 1978, lot 329.