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This piece sold recently at auction, and features a monogram and characters.
What might the characters represent - the person's name as it sounds in Mandarin? The name of the atelier?

The characters 郝祿 would form the surname and given name Hao Lu in their mandarin pinyin transcription. I wondered if this might be an old monogram for John Player Cigarettes, but nothing turned up in the Google images. Google searches turned up no clear relationship between the monogram and the characters that I could detect.

Good luck,

Bill H.

I have one of these cases similar to the monogrammed one pictured below, only mine substitutes a shou character for the monogram.
Like the lime green dragons case, they're curved so they don't ruin the look of a suit pocket?

This website tells about a less elaborate design, dated to a U.S. Marine in 1936.

http://www.usmilitariaforum.com/forums/index.php?/topic/153690-china-marine-cigarette-case-named-to-michael-tschetter/

Same pair of lime green dragons with spiral branch diaper, only this time with a different character which of course is a mystery to me) and monogram WLB.

The close-up photos disguise how tiny and precise is the wirework and enamel fill on these little 4x3 cases.

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