A sense of refined grandeur is successfully captured by the minimalist form of this attractive table, supported by four elegant square legs culminating at horse-hoof feet. This simple design also highlights the rich colour and attractive natural patterns of the grain of the wood. Long tables such as the present are known as
tiaozhuo and would have been used in the scholar’s studio as its length and absence of stretchers would have made it suitable for sitting at for the creation and admiration of scroll paintings, while holding books, brush holders and other scholar’s objects.
Compare a similar huanghuali table in the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, Washington D.C., placed in a reconstruction of a 17th century scholar’s studio, illustrated in Sarah Handler, Austere Luminosity of Chinese Classical Furniture, Berkeley, 2001, p. 21, fig. 1.13; and two further tables sold in these rooms, one attributed to the late Ming dynasty, 11th November 2015, lot 26, and the other, but smaller in size and attributed to the 18th century, 8th November 2017, lot 99.