Imperial presentation box and cover  

Contacts between the royal families of Britain and Japan grew closer after an Anglo-Japanese Alliance was signed in 1902. Several Japanese princes made visits to the United Kingdom, bringing gifts of contemporary lacquer, including cabinets and boxes by leading Japanese artists such as Akatsuka Jitoku (1871–1936) and Shirayama Shosai (1853–1923). This document box was given to the Princess of Wales, later Queen Mary (1867–1953), by Prince Fushimi, who visited London in May 1907. Fushimi had been sent to England to express the Emperor's gratitude to King Edward VII for his award of the Order of the Garter. The box is decorated with a rich background of gold flakes (known as nashiji) and flowers with mother-of-pearl petals. The years that followed saw an unprecedented British interest in Japanese art thanks to the Japan–British Exhibition in White City, London, in 1910, where much lacquer of this kind was exhibited.