Page 38 - Christies Asia Week 2015 Chinese Works of Art

PROPERTY FROM A DISTINGUISHED PRIVATE COLLECTION
2028
A RARE HUANGHUALI BOOKCASE, SHUJIA
17TH CENTURY

The top panel and the three shelves are supported in a rectangular frame with molded square-
corner posts. The top shelf is bordered on three sides with openwork galleries of repeated
quadrilobe and lotus motifs, the middle shelf with key-fret galleries is ftted fush with two
drawers, all above a lower shelf with plain apron and spandrels.
66º in. (168.3 cm.) high, 35æ in. (90.8 cm.) wide, 17Ω in. (44.5 cm.) deep

$80,000-120,000

PROVENANCE:

Christie’s New York, 19 December 2001, lot 269.

Bookcases and open-shelf stands are referred to as shujia or shuge, the basic forms of which are
discussed by Wang Shixiang, Connoisseurship of Chinese Furniture, Hong Kong, 1995, p. 82, D1-3.
Important features of any scholar’s studio, bookcases were a symbol of culture and education. Open-
shelving fulflled two roles, as it allowed scholars to create elegant displays of scholar’s objects and
also functioned for storage of albums and books.
Compare a four-shelf bookcase of similar size (180.4 cm. high) currently in the Minneapolis Institute of
Arts, and illustrated by R. D. Jacobsen and N. Grindley, Classical Chinese Furniture in the Minneapolis
Institute of Arts, Minneapolis, 1999, pp. 142-43, no. 49. Similar to the present example, the bookcase
in Minneapolis has the added decorative touch of an openwork gallery, constructed from wumu.
See, also, another example illustrated by Wang Shixiang, ibid. p. 142, D6, where the galleries are
elaborately carved with cruciform-latticework.

明末清初 黃花梨書架

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