The Personal Collection of the late Sir Joseph Hotung. Lot 11. A very rare and outstanding huanghuali folding horseshoe-back armchair, jiaoyi, Late Ming dynasty; 71.2 by 67.2 by h. 102.8 cm. Lot sold: 124,609,000 HKD (Estimate: 10,000,000 - 15,000,000 HKD). © Sotheby's 2022
of elegant and generous proportions, the horseshoe back surmounting a plain splat flanked by cusped and beaded spandrels, the arm supported on S-curved and circular-section arm posts which continue through the seat frame forming the front legs, the posts with shaped spandrels and change to square-section at the crook and at the pivot of the legs, further strengthened with damascened iron 'bamboo-and-vase' braces between the arm and the posts, and with ruyi-shaped braces within the crook, the front seat rail detailed with cusped beading, the pivoting footrest supported by short cabriole legs and mounted with damascened iron with a design of two rhinoceros horns flanking a coin, each structural joins reinforced with damascened iron mounts, some with scrolling tendril design.
Provenance: La Compagnie de la Chine et des Indes, Paris, 10th September 1968.
Collection of Arthur M. Sackler, 1968-96.
Collection of Else Sackler, 1996-2001.
Collection of Dr Elizabeth A. Sackler, 2001.
Christie's New York, 20th September 2001, lot 254 and cover.
Nicholas Grindley, London, 2001.
Literature: Michel Beurdeley, Chinese Furniture, Tokyo, New York and San Francisco, 1979, p. 80, pl. 105.
Note: Folding horseshoe-back armchairs, perhaps the most highly sought after of all items of Ming (1368-1644) furniture, are among the most striking and most highly celebrated designs created by Chinese carpenters. Conceived to be folded for easy transport, these portable chairs were naturally more prone to damage than other pieces of furniture; few, therefore, could withstand the test of time, making extant examples extremely precious.
Jiaoyi, the term for ‘folding chairs’ in Chinese, literally means ‘crossed chair’, with reference to their intersecting legs.
The Chinese phrase diyi ba jiaoyi, ‘the first taking the jiaoyi’, which is still in use, implies the highest-ranking person of an assembly who sits in a prominent position (fig. 1). Folding chairs with straight back (fig. 2, upper left) were in China already in use in the Northern Song dynasty (960-1127), but were also produced in other countries. They were in use in the townhouses and bustling shops of the prosperous Song capital, as depicted in the famous painting Along the River during the Qingming Festival by Zhang Zeduan (1085-1145).
fig. 1. Illustration in yangzheng tujie [The Book of Didactic Illustrations], Ming dynasty, Wanli period edition.
The folding chair with horse-shoe shaped back was a unique invention of China’s furniture makers from around the early 12th century. It is an ingenious combination of an easy-to-carry folding chair and a comfortable armchair (fig. 2, lower right). A remarkable marriage of elegance and functionality, the unique form of the horseshoe-back folding armchair revolutionised the art of chair design. The continuous back and arm rail creates a smooth, fluid curve that gives the chair a dynamic shape with a variable but equally graceful silhouette whether seen straight on, from the side, or in three-quarter view. In addition, it offers a sense of containment and ease by encircling the occupant’s upper body. The wide back splat that provides comfort can be decorated with subtle embellishments without interfering with the linear quality of the overall form. The curved wooden frame is reinforced at critical points with artistically designed metal braces to reinforce the delicate and light structure, and an openwork metal plaque shields and strengthens the footrest. The highly skilled carpenters thus overcame the considerable technical challenges of this construction without compromising on aesthetic appeal, making these extraordinary chairs masterpieces of furniture design. The design reached its peak during the Ming dynasty, when carpenters were able to create the finest furniture from hardwood, such as the beautifully coloured, expensive huanghuali rosewood, by developing sophisticated joinery techniques. The Ming carpenter’s manual Lu Ban Jing (The Treatise of Lu Ban) provides a detailed description for making this unique type of seat and illustrates it with an image of an official seated on such a chair (fig. 3).
fig. 2. Sancai tuhui [Assembled pictures of the three realms], Wanli period version, Qiyong shier juan [Twelve volumes of useful objects], Ming dynasty, Wanli period edition.
fig. 3. Illustration in Lu Ban Jing [The Treatise of Lu Ban], Ming dynasty edition.
The historical importance of jiaoyi can be evidenced by their frequent appearance in paintings and prints from the Song (960-1279) to the Qing (1644-1911) periods. An album leaf from the Southern Song period (1127-1279) in the Palace Museum, Beijing, depicts this recent invention used by an elegant lady out of doors. Another horseshoe-backed folding chair is depicted in a Song album leaf entitled Late Return from Spring Tour in the same museum, where a servant is seen carrying the folded chair on his shoulders as his master rides through a gate towards a grand mansion. In this context, the chair is a representation of the comfortable and relaxed style of living that the owner was accustomed to. The Ming painting Birthday Gathering in the Bamboo Garden by Lü Ji and Lü, also in the Beijing Palace Museum, shows some of the highest-ranking government officials of the day seated on folding round-back chairs. While the furniture represents the social status of the participants, the antiques and scholarly paraphernalia surrounding them suggest their aesthetic discernment and literary accomplishments. The Qianlong Emperor (r. 1736-95) is also seen, in a handscroll by the Italian artist and Jesuit missionary Giuseppe Castiglione (1688-1766), seated on a horseshoe-back folding chair on a terrace, while receiving tribute horses from Kazakh envoys (fig. 4). On such a diplomatic occasion, the folding armchair acted as a throne that symbolised imperial power and prestige of the ruler.
fig. 4. Giuseppe Castiglione (1688-1766), Qazaq présentant leur tribut de chevaux à l'empereur Qianlong, 1757, détail, Musée Guimet. Photo (C) RMN-Grand Palais (MNAAG, Paris) / image RMN-GP.
Less than thirty horseshow-backed folding chairs are known to exist from the Ming dynasty, largely preserved in museums. The Victoria and Albert Museum, London, considers its lacquer version of a folding armchair (accession no. FE.8-1976) ‘among the Museum's most important Chinese treasures’. Only five other jiaoyi with damascened iron mounts appear to have been published. They are considered to be among the earliest examples of Ming jiaoyi and would all have been made in the same workshop. Three of them, closely related to each other, are decorated with a double-dragon ruyi-cloud medallion carved on the upper section of the back splat: one from the Qing Court collection and still in the Palace Museum, Beijing, is illustrated in The Complete Collection of Treasures in the Palace Museum. Furniture of the Ming and Qing Dynasties, vol. 1, Hong Kong, 2002, pl. 14; another was sold in our New York rooms, 18th September 1996, lot 311, later in the collection of Ruth and Bruce Dayton and now in the Minneapolis Institute of Art (accession no. 98.80.3), illustrated in Robert D. Jacobsen and Nicholas Grindley, Classical Chinese Furniture in the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, Minneapolis, 1999, cover image and pl. 11; the third, formerly in the collection of Chen Mengjia, is illustrated in Wang Shixiang, Classic Chinese Furniture. Ming and Early Qing Dynasties, London, 1986, pl. 57. The remaining two have more elaborate carving on the splat: one carved with a continuous floral scroll, preserved in the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City (accession no. 68-1), was included in the exhibition Beyond the Screen: Chinese Furniture of the 16th and 17th Centuries, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, 1996, cat. no. 3; the other carved with a stylised dragon and shou character in the form of a ding tripod, formerly in the collection of the Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto, and the Museum of Classical Chinese Furniture, Renaissance, California, is illustrated in Wang Shixiang and Evarts Curtis, Masterpieces from the Museum of Classical Chinese Furniture, San Francisco and Chicago, 1995, pl. 35, and was sold at Christie’s New York, 19th September 1996, lot 50. The relatively simple design of the present chair, with a plain but curvier back splat, is distinguished by its purity of form and gives a sense of refined elegance and timelessness.
Sotheby's. HOTUNG The Personal Collection of the late Sir Joseph Hotung: Part 1, Hong Kong, 8 October 2022