Page 271 - Sotheby's October 3 2017 Chinese Art

Art, Kansas City, illustrated in Wang Shixiang,
Connoisseurship of Chinese Furniture. Ming and
Early Qing Dynasty, Hong Kong, 1990, vol. II,
pl. D23; and another from the collection of the
Marchesa Taliani de Marchio, published in Gustav
Ecke, Chinese Domestic Furniture, Tokyo, 1962,
pl. 111, no. 90.

Tapered cabinets made their appearance in
the Ming period but quickly grew in popularity
thanks to their elegant appearance and sturdy
construction which was suitable for storing
clothing. Although a matter of speculation, their
origin is traced back to rectangular chests with
pyramid-shaped lids, which in the Song period
became larger and featured a pair of doors at
the front. A cabinet of this type is illustrated as
raised on a table in the Southern Song handscroll
Sericulture, now in the Heilongjiang Provincial
Museum, illustrated in Sarah Handler, Austere
Luminosity of Chinese Classical Furniture,
Berkeley, 2001, fig. 15.5.

Highly practical in their construction with easily
removable shelves, these cabinets were found in
women’s quarters as they were part of a bride’s
dowry. Tapered cabinets also provided elegant
and functional storage space in scholars’ offices.
In the famous late Ming novel Jing ping mei
(The plum in the golden vase), the main male
protagonist Ximen Qing is described as storing
his official clothes in a cabinet in his office (Sarah
Handler, Ming Furniture in the Light of Chinese
Architecture, Berkeley, 2001, p. 178).