Page 68 - Chinese Decorative Arts: The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin, v. 55, no. 1 (Summer, 1997)

in a
with
Tray Figures Landscape
....................................................................................
Yuan 14th
dynasty, century
Black with inlay
lacquer mother-of-pearl
Diam. 19 3/8 in. (49.2 cm)
Lent Florence and Herbert
by
Irving
he incorporation mother-of-pearl in
of
lacquer is an ingenious Chinese exploita-
tion of lacquer layers that have been built up
to a considerable thickness. The earliest exca-
vated example, a black sutra box featuring an
experimental floral scroll in mother-of-pearl,
dates to the tenth century. By the late twelfth
to the thirteenth century, lacquered furniture,
sumptuously adorned with small pieces of
mother-of-pearl painstakingly cut into shape
and put together in floral-scroll designs, was
used in the palace and the homes of the wealthy.
The introduction of pictorial compositions in
mother-of-pearl inlay further extended the
decorative potential of the medium. Such
depictions probably were an innovation of
the thirteenth century and remained a strong
tradition until the seventeenth century.
This tray, which is decorated with a design
of figures in a landscape, is datable to the four-
teenth century because of its unusual shape
and eloquent pictorial techniques. It is uncom- introduces another element of irregularity that illustrative paintings. The image is divided
mon in the odd number of its sides. The posi- breaks the static effect of the polygonal frame. into two sections by an obscuring mist. In the
tioning of the narrative scene's bottom on a The scene employs a set of artistic conven- background four elderly men are gathered
by
point, which happens to be slightly off center, tions well established this time in Chinese under a pine tree for a moonlit drinking
party. In the foreground officials on horse-
back and their halberd-bearing attendants and
young servants pause at a bridge on the way
to the party. Originality and freshness in
design come through in the details, as seen in
the trailing clouds and rising mist, the two
kinds of wave patterns indicating the stream's
rapids, and the way the ground is defined.
Later mother-of-pearl inlays with similar
details tend to be more pattern oriented and
repetitive. On the other hand, the complex
designs on the characters' clothes are evidence
that the depiction of figures was already
sophisticated, setting the standard until the
seventeenth century. WAS

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