A pair of huanghuali round-cornered tapered cabinets, yuanjiaogui Late Ming – early Qing dynasty | 明末至清初 黃花梨圓角櫃成對

The Mimi and Raymond Hung Collection.

洪氏收藏

Robert Hatfield Ellsworth, Chinese Furniture: One Hundred and Three Examples from the Mimi and Raymond Hung Collection, Hong Kong, 2005, no. 3.

安思遠，《洪氏所藏木器百圖》，香港，2005年，編號3

Tall, sloping side two-drawer cabinets such as the present pair belong to the most elegant and recognisable forms of classical Chinese furniture. The extravagant use of large, book-matched huanghuali panels, with their attractive swirls in a subtle variety of tones, is also a powerful statement of wealth and taste.

These elegant cabinets were a popular type of domestic furniture in the Ming and Qing dynasty, and were made of various sizes and with more or less pronounced sloping sides. They were kept in scholar's studios and used to store either clothes or writing instruments. The Ming dynasty vernacular novel Jin Ping Mei [Plum in the Golden Vase] mentions a cabinet in the study of Ximen Qing, the corrupt merchant protagonist of the story, which contained his official robes and accessories.

The present pair of cabinets does not have a central stile, suggesting that the doors were not designed to be secured by locks. See a similar pair of cabinets, also without a central stile, in the collection of Dr S.Y. Yip, illustrated in Grace Wu Bruce, Dreams of Chu Tan Chamber and the Romance with Huanghuali Wood: The Dr. S.Y. Yip Collection of Classic Chinese Furniture, Hong Kong, 1991, cat. no. 47; and a further pair, sold in these rooms, 11th July 2020, lot 118 (https://www.sothebys.com/en/auctions/ecatalogue/lot.118.html/2020/monochrome-hk0939). For cabinets with a removable central stile, see a pair in the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, obj. no. 82-32/1,2 (https://art.nelson-atkins.org/objects/27211/cabinet), illustrated in Gustav Ecke, Chinese Domestic Furniture, Beijing, 1944, pl. 113, no. 92.

對櫃造型典麗，各具兩屜，上歛下展。門板用料奢侈，紋理細緻對稱，品味高致，色雅大方，昔時僅富裕人家可享。明清兩朝，圓角櫃甚得青睞，有製尺寸、比例略異者，多用於書齋，宜於置放衣物或文房用品。如《金瓶梅》版畫中，可見西門慶於書齋置櫃，擺放官袍、佩飾。

對櫃兩門之間並沒有閂柱，此式稱為「硬擠門」，推測應非為牢鎖而造。類同之「硬擠門」圓角櫃，可參考葉承耀收藏對櫃，見伍嘉恩，《攻玉山房藏明式黄花梨家具：楮檀室夢旅》，香港，1991年，編號47。另見一對例，售於香港蘇富比2020年7月11日，編號118。設有活動閂柱之例，則可參考美國堪薩斯城納爾遜．阿特金斯藝術博物館藏對櫃，藏品編號82-32/1,2，收錄於王世襄，《明式家具研究》，北京，2013年，頁181，丁23。