A Huanghuali Mirror Stand Qing Dynasty, 18th Century

of rectangular section, supported on four cabriole legs with a shaped apron finely carved with a lipped edge extending into interlocking scrolls, the hinged door panels set with rectangular face-plates and pulls, opening to reveal a partition of four drawers with two smaller drawers above and a larger drawer below, the top set with a removable flower knob to support a mirror within a tall hexagonal three-stepped frame, the latter carved in openwork with two phoenix among foliate peonies on the centre panel, between flowers and birds and writhing archaistic dragons on the sides, the shorter balustrated front carved with further archaistic dragons, all below curved rounded rails detailed with dragon-head terminals, the well-figured wood patinated to a warm reddish-brown colour

Examples of larger five-panelled mirror stands similarly carved in openwork, but with a further balustrade on the rectangular plinth, include one exhibited in Chinese Hardwood Furniture in Hawaiian Collection, Honolulu Academy of Arts, Honolulu, 1982, cat. no. 46; two sold in our New York rooms, the first, 19th October 1990, lot 538, and the second, 19th and 20th March 2007, lot 318; and another, formerly in the collection of the Museum of Classical Chinese Furniture, sold at Christie’s New York, 19th September 1996, lot 56. Two very fine examples of this type, one held in the Palace Museum, Beijing, and the other in the collection of the Hardwood Furniture Factory, Beijing, are illustrated in Wang Shixiang, Connoisseurship of Chinese Furniture. Ming and Early Qing Dynasties, Hong Kong, 1990, pls. E31 and E32.