A magnificent guri and incised red lacquer table screen and stand, Late Ming dynasty

French Private Collection.

This magnificent screen is striking for its powerful form combined with intricate and meticulous decoration. Carved on one side with luxuriant peony flowers, the other with lingzhi, pine and rockwork. Each flower bloom is naturalistically rendered and the sense of luxurious delicacy is captured through the shallow grooves.

While the qianjin and tianqi (‘gold-engraved and filled-in’) method was known from at least the 3rd century, it grew in popularity during the Jiajing and Wanli reigns. This technique, which involved the inlaying of gold leaves to delineate motifs that were filled with coloured lacquer, allowed craftsmen to achieve attractive shading effects in vibrant colours within clearly defined forms, as evident on leaves and flower sprays of this panel. Highly laborious and time-consuming, this technique was more commonly used on objects of small size and only rarely on large palace-quality pieces such as the present example.

The stand is finely carved in the attractive guri technique. Guri lacquer of different periods are distinguished by the thickness and depth of the carving, the number of lacquer layers employed and the smoothness of the finish. The style of rounded cutting combined with a perfectly smooth finish are in keeping with Ming examples such as that seen on a lacquer box and cover included in the exhibition From Innovation to Conformity, Bluett and Sons, London, 1989, cat. no. 29. The attractive, evenly balanced, stylised scroll border design is also distinctive of the Ming period when it was frequently employed to decorate the back of dishes, for example see a dish included ibid., cat. no. 17.

The creation of lacquer furniture reached the apex of quality during the Jiajing and Wanli periods. For a lacquered table decorated with designs of flowers and birds in the Palace Museum, Beijing, see The Complete Collection of Treasures from the Palace Museum. Furniture of the Ming and Qing Dynasties, Hong Kong, 2002, pl. 91.