Page 53 - Sotheby's Asia Week March 2024 Chinee Art

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PROPERTY FROM A NEW YORK PRIVATE COLLECTION 十七 / 十八世紀 紫檀嵌鸂鶒木櫃格
A ‘ZITAN’ AND ‘JICHIMU’ DISPLAY CABINET,
17TH / 18TH CENTURY 來源:
Height 70½ in., 179.1 cm; Width 45 in., 114.3 cm; 嘉木堂，香港，1980年代末
Depth 18¾ in., 47.6 cm

PROVENANCE
Grace Wu Bruce Ltd., Hong Kong, late 1980s.
This type of cabinet with open shelves, known as Wanligui
(Wanli period cabinets), is highly unusual. First appearing
in the mid- to late Ming dynasty, they were generally kept
in the scholar’s studio, where, often in pairs, they were
arranged either side by side or on opposite walls, creating a
visual symmetry sought after in Chinese interior design. The
top shelves were used for storing books and scrolls, as well
as treasured antiques, while writing implements, such as
brushes and ink, were kept inside the drawers. The sturdier
and enclosed lower sections were, on the other hand, used
for storing more fragile objects or tea utensils that could
be brought out in the presence of guests. Referred to as
lianggegui by modern cabinet makers, this type of bookshelf
seldom appears on contemporary woodblock printed books,
attesting to its rarity.
The display and storage of books in the scholar’s studio
was of great importance as it was indicative of the level of
education and cultural refinement of the master of the house.
The scholar Gao Lian (1573-1620) in his Zun sheng bajian
[Eight discourses on the art of living], first published in 1591,
mentions that bookcases ‘should be used for placing one’s
favorite books, which could be Confucian classics, poems,
Buddhist scriptures, or for important medical literature and
calligraphy’. For Ming dynasty scholar Wen Zhenheng (1585-
1645), it was important not to display too many books and
scrolls ‘otherwise the room looks like a bookstore’ (Wen
Zhenheng, Chang wu zhi [Treaties on Superfluous Things],
translated in the catalogue to the exhibition Beyond the
Screen. Chinese Furniture of the 16th and 17th Centuries,
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, 1996, p. 85).
The use of two valuable hardwoods on the present piece is
noteworthy. The golden tones and lively grains of the jichimu
panels are brilliantly enhanced and harmonized by the rich
luminosity of the dark purples and browns of the zitan frame.
The unfinished softwood forming the back panel and the top
panel of the two-door storage section of the cabinet would
have been covered by decorative panels, perhaps of painted
lacquer. This cabinet shares similarities in form with a
huanghuali cabinet fashioned with two open shelves from the
Qing Court Collection and still in Beijing, illustrated in Wang
Shixiang, Classic Chinese Furniture. Ming and Early Qing
Dynasties, London, 1986, pl. 138.

$ 70,000-90,000

102 SOTHEBY’S COMPLETE CATALOGUING AVAILABLE AT SOTHEBYS.COM/N11410 103