Three ivory 'doctor's models'18th/19th century|Each modelled reclining in a suggestive pose, the head resting upon the hooked arm, the other arm placed across the body, one leg crossed over the other towards the front, the hair arranged in elaborate chignons, some coloured pigments remaining, one with wood stand.|The largest 15.2cm (6in) long. (4).|Provenance|'Doctor's models' were popularly produced in China from the Ming Dynasty until the nineteenth century. They were once thought to be a medical aid, used by a Chinese doctor to locate his female patients' source of pain.|It has been suggested that these figures may also be influenced by the prototypes of ivory carvings of the sleeping infant Christ, originally imported into the Philippines from Goa. They were then adapted to reclining female figures, to be used as erotic toys. It is recorded by the Ming scholar Shen Defu (1578-1642) that ivory carvers in Fujian 'made small figures of pairs in sexual congress which were of high artistic quality'. Explicit erotic ivories were collected by Europeans in China.|See Chinese Ivories from the Shang to the Qing, Oriental Ceramic Society, 1984, pp.41-43.