Edo period Japanese lacquer casket – £40,000 at Sworders.
Unusually for an Asian art sale, the top price at Sworders in Stansted Mountfitchet on May 17 was paid for a Japanese work of art. A 12in (30cm) casket – one of two lacquer boxes in a lot estimated at just £200-300 – was identified by bidders as part of a rare group of early to mid-17th century export wares.
Although the Edo period is characterised as the era of self-imposed semi-isolation after the relative openess of the Momoyama, the limited international trade in its art continued to have a great impact on the west.