Page 126 - Nov 29 2017 HK Important Chinese Ceramics

PROPERTY FROM THE RAYMOND HUNG COLLECTION
~ 2950

A RARE HUANGHUALI RECESSED-LEG SIDE
TABLE
QING DYNASTY, 17TH-18TH CENTURY
The rectangular top is flanked by graceful everted ends, and is
carved with elegant beadwork along the outside edges, above
the shaped aprons and cloud-form spandrels. The splayed,
slightly tapering legs are of rectangular section and are carved
with a raised bead running down the centre of each outside face,
terminating in ruyi-form hoof feet raised on stepped chucks.
32 Ω in. (83 cm.) high, 46 Ω in. (118 cm.) wide,
15 in. (38.1 cm.) deep

HK$3,000,000-5,000,000 US$390,000-640,000

清十七 / 十八世紀 黃花梨翹頭案

LITERATURE
R. Hatfield Ellsworth, N. Grindley and Anita Christy, Chinese
Furniture: One Hundred Examples from the Mimi and Raymond Hung
Collection, vol. 1, New York, 1996, pp. 136-137, no. 47
The form of the present table, with its shaped aprons, elaborate
spandrels, mid-leg ‘barbed leaf’ carving and ruyi-form feet is a
particularly archaic one, derived from the open-panel box construction
developed as early as the Tang dynasty. Several small wine tables
with such features can be seen in the Song-dynasty painting album,
Tianlai ge jiucang Songren huace, part of which is illustrated in Wang
Shixiang’s Connoisseurship of Chinese Furniture, vol. I, Hong Kong,
1990, p. 55, fig. 2.20. A few extant examples of this form are known,
including one at the Nelson-Atkins Museum, illustrated by Roger Ward
and Patricia Fidler in The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art: A Handbook of
the Collection, New York, 1993, p. 342, and another example in tielimu
illustrated by Wang Shixiang in ibid., vol. II, p. 78, no. B36, although
both lack the everted ends. For a slightly larger example with everted
ends and very similar mid-leg ‘barbed-leaf’ carvings in the Royal Ontario
Museum, see R. Ellsworth, Chinese Furniture: Hardwood Examples of
the Ming and Early Ch’ing Dynasties, New Fairfield, CT, 1970, no. 53.

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