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P. 150
~984
A GREEN MARBLE-INSET HUANGHUALI TABLE SCREEN
18TH-19TH CENTURY
The variegated stone panel suggests a mountainous landscape enshrouded in mist, and is set in a shaped
frame enclosed by small panels carved with lozenge-shaped apertures. The upright struts are fanked by
openwork spandrels and are set into carved shoe feet joined by fnely shaped aprons carved with stylized
ruyi heads at the corners.
23º in. (59 cm.) high
$20,000-30,000
Decorative stone panels have long been prized by the literati for their abstract imagery and complex
patterns. Often evoking dramatic landscapes, these panels were set into tables, display stands or
screens. Table screens, such as the present example, were set on the scholar’s desk to encourage
refection.
A huanghauli and jumu table screen with related inset green mottled stone and framed with pierced
decorative panels is illustrated by Zhang Jinhua in The Classical Chinese Furniture of Weiyang:
Representative Examples, vol, 2, London, 2016, p. 294-5. Compare a larger green marble-inset table
screen (64.8 cm.), with more elaborately carved huanghuali frame, dating to the late 16th-early 17th
century, currently in the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, and illustrated by R. Jacobsen, Classical Chinese
Furniture in the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, Minneapolis, 1999, pp. 208-9, pl. 78. See, also, another
green marble-inset huanghuali table screen, formerly in the Lai Family Collection, sold at Christie’s New
York, 17 September 2015, lot 908.
清十八/十九世紀 黃花梨嵌綠石小座屏風
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