Four south Chinese white porcelain figures of seated boys. Each seated on the ground with legs apart and hollow-moulded, naked apart from a blue sash tied across the stomach, wearing a smiling expression and with the hair dressed in two topknots. He holds damaged attributes, perhaps a lotus plant (right hand) and a spray of lingzhi (left hand), emblems of purity and longevity.

Similar examples have been recovered from a succession of trading ships wrecked in the South China Sea between the early eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, while en route from China to the islands of south-east Asia, notably from the wreck of the Geldermalsen, c.1750. Possibly intended for the Chinese communities settled there, such figures were perhaps appreciated by their recipients as wish tokens for the birth of a male heir.

Text adapted from Chinese and Japanese Works of Art in the Collection of Her Majesty The Queen: Volume I.