Page 149 - September 20 2021 Chinese Works of Art Bonhams NYC

The couch bed form as a low platform (ta) without sides can be traced
back to the Han dynasty, (206BCE to 207CE) as a single-person low
seat. Sara Handler records in her important article, “Comfort and
Joy: A Couch bed for Day and Night”, published in the Journal of the
Classical Chinese Furniture Society, Winter 1991, pp. 4-19, an early
evolution of this form found in a screen excavated from the 484CE
tomb of Sima Jinlong, showing a woman seated on a three-panel-
backed platform, with the top rails of equal height. She further cites
a couch recorded in the Yuan dynasty Shilin guangji with lower side
railings, and Ming dynasty examples where multiple types exist, from
plain, elegantly figured huanghuali back panels with rounded butterflied
joints to elaborate and richly carved architectural masterpieces with
elegant, doweled posts, ruyi-headed cut-out panels, and cabriole legs
op.cit. p.10. She records the existence of elaborately carved vignettes
on back and side panels in a circa 1700 album leaf illustration to the
Jin Ping Mei housed in the Nelson Atkins Museum of Art, op.cit., p. 16,
fig. 18. Sometime, perhaps early in the course of its history, the ta, a
seated platform, gained its added function as a vehicle for both daily
activities and nightly repose chuang.
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