A very rare and important shell inlaid, lacquer display cabinet, 'wanligui', Ming dynasty (1368-1644), second half of the 16th century. Photo courtesy Littleton & Hennessy Asian Art Ltd.
154 cm high; 75 cm wide; 56 cm deep.
The elegantly proportioned cabinet with a display shelf and two doors, each door separated into two larger and two smaller panels, with another triple panel at the base. The cabinet decorated throughout in black lacquer, inlaid with scenes of official life on the doors, a lakeside landscape on the back and loose sprays of flowers on either side.
Cabinets of this form with an open area in the top for the display of antiques or scholar’s objects are sometimes known as Wanli cabinets, and in fact seem to have first appeared in the second half of the 16th to the first quarter of the 17th century, a period which coincides with the Wanli reign period. As is now known, this was also a period of tremendous development in taste for art and luxurious consumables as evidenced by the numerous writings on the subject of this date. In fact it may be argued that the appearance of a display shelf was the result of the new taste for ostentation, as collected antiques needed to be shown in the scholar’s studio.
This cupboard however is in itself a masterpiece of the lacquerer’s art and would have been the centerpiece of a very luxurious interior. Luodian or shell inlaid lacquer objects and furniture have been prized by the Chinese from the earliest times and have a rich and marvelous history.
Provenance: Old Japanese collection - purchased in Taiwan
Littleton & Hennessy Asian Art Ltd (stand 269) at TEFAF 2014. 14-23 march 2014 - http://www.tefaf.com/