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I obtained this woman’s box at an estate sale and find the level of detail and age appearance to be genuine. It is approx 6” long by 2.5” wide and 2” tall. Heavy bronze or brass with some type of black stone inlay. The inlay has a oriental woman on top which appears to be holding a five finger baby dragon. There is gold leaf(?)coloring decorating her wardrobe and hair combs. The detail in her dress is not visible without a loupe but appears to be floral made with mini dots. The two long sides of box are detailed beautifully with leafs and three circle with image inside as well as the top and bottom each with one. The stamp on the bottom is a very old version of Chinese. My girl friend is Chinese and to her best can only guess the first word to be Shī(family name?) and the second being “horse”. These are only guesses. We found the second(left side) word on line. Of course in Chinese the two symbols ctogether can take on a different meaning all in all

The box is definitely Japanese,
The marking on the bottom reads,
駒　-　Koma (Foal)
I could not find any clue to the artist, or maker.

With regars,
I.Nagy

Thank you very much for your help. Thank you.

I have located the mark to be SeiBei Komai
Japanese iron and 24K plating.

The father Otojiro Komai
has the 駒-Koma (Foal) similar mark in his name.

My only last curiosity is that I can not find any other
piece similar to this one with a full body sculpture on it.
I am wondering if it could have been a family owned piece.
The Kimono celebrated a woman coming of availible age for
marriage

URL Title :The mark

Additional images.

Well I seem to have narrowed it to the Komai Otojiro family mark. But in all my research I can not find any piece similar, as in, with a woman's carving on the lid. Is it possible that this was a family members private piece? Would this be normal not to find a simular item? The actual art work is very consistant with the company

URL Title :The family marking

Thank you for the further research,
I see, indeed,
駒 (Koma) within the character 井 makes the
駒井　Komai mark
I browsed through the web sites (Japanese, English) about Komai brand products. There are a lot of jewelry boxes,cigarette cases, card
cases, buttoms,incense burners etc.
Surely was not a private piece, all objects have had the same marking.

With regards,
I.Nagy

Thank you again for your attention.

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