A zitan table, tiaozhuo Qing dynasty, early 18th century | 清十八世紀初 紫檀有束腰條桌

Ho Cheung, Hong Kong.

Ji Ya Xuan collection.

Sotheby’s New York, 17th/18th September 2013, lot 259.

Ho Cheung，香港

Ji Ya Xuan 收藏

紐約蘇富比2013年9月17/18日，編號259

There is a closely related table in the Palace Museum Collection, Beijing, illustrated by Hu Desheng, A Treasury of Ming and Qing Dynasty Palace Furniture, vol. 1, Beijing, 2007, fig. 233. The author observes that the table shares some structural characteristics with Western architecture and presumably this refers to the turned finial at the top of each leg, a feature derived from the columns of classic antiquity. The adaptation of this Western motif is very successfully integrated with traditional Chinese archaistic references. The carved 'hooks' and 'scrolls' are design elements taken directly from early jades and bronzes.

Jonathon Hay in Sensuous Surfaces, The Decorative Object in Early Modern China, Honolulu, 2010, discusses 18th century taste for archaism and notes that zitan wood provided an ideal surface for the bold geometric lines of Chinese antique vernacular, describing it as a 'distinctly new form' (p. 161). It seems then, that this table embodies archaic features of both East and West harmoniously merged in a distinctive style that speaks to the expansive, multi-cultural imperial taste that simultaneously references the past, while pushing into the future with innovative design.