Page 42 - Christies THE LAI FAMILY COLLECTION OF FINE CHINESE FURNITURE AND WORKS OF ART
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910 Thought to be made in pairs, demi-lune tables
A VERY RARE HUANGHUALI WAISTLESS were designed to be pushed together to form
DEMI-LUNE TABLE, YUEYAZHUO a single round table. The half-width of the
16TH-17TH CENTURY rear legs of the present table suggests this
table would have been made as one of a pair.
The single-panel top is set within a D-form When matched with its mate, the table’s half
frame with beaded edge above shaped legs would appear to be a single leg. There
aprons. The whole is raised on four tapering are no known extant pairs of demi-lune tables,
legs of square section terminating in fared dating to the 16th-17th century, and even
hoof feet. single tables such as the present example are
33æ in. (85.7 cm.) high, 43 in. (109.2 cm.) quite rare.
wide, 21 in. (53.3 cm.) deep
The use of supporting cross stretchers appears
$150,000-200,000 to be quite rare and only one other published
example, illustrated by M. Flacks, Classical
PROVENANCE: Chinese Furniture: a very personal point of
view, London, 2011, pp. 248-51, also has this
Property from the Lai Family Collection. very unusual construction. Most published
examples, such as a demi-lune table in the
Half-round tables are recorded in the Ming collection of Messrs. Robert and William
carpenter’s manuals, Lu Ban Jing, suggesting Drummond, illustrated by G. Ecke, Domestic
they were once more common than the few Chinese Furniture, Rutland and Tokyo, 1962,
surviving examples would seem to indicate. A p. 72, fg. 55, are shown with shaped aprons.
demi-lune table and two outline drawings are See, also, another huanghuali demi-lune
illustated by Wang Shixiang, Connoisseurship of example illustrated by Grace Wu Bruce, Living
Chinese Furniture, vol. II, p. 118, B125-B127. With Ming – The Lu Ming Shi Collection,
Phillipe de Backer, 2000, p. 112, pl. 22, and
one sold at Christie’s New York, 18 September
1997, lot 33, from the Mr. and Mrs. Robert P.
Piccus Collection.
明十六/清十七世紀
黃花梨無束腰月牙桌
