FUZHOU, 1800-1920

Fuzhou, the capital of Fujian province, has long had a well-established arts and crafts industry producing a variety of wares, among them a famous, local lacquerware which flourished during the mid- to late-Qing period and is characterized by its light weight and extensive use of monochrome colors. Fuzhou lacquer is a painted rather than carved lacquer. Any carving tends to be done in wood first, and then covered with lacquer, rather than, as with cinnabar lacquer, carving a considerable thickness of the lacquer itself. The lightness of the material has given rise to the belief that Fuzhou lacquer was mostly built up on a silk, or other textile ground rather than metal or wood, the two standard surfaces for lacquerers. This may be the case in some wares, but there seems little evidence of it in extant pieces where, when it is possible to check the underlying material, it tends to be a very light wood, similar to balsa-wood. Fuzhou snuff bottles are known bearing credible, late-Qianlong reign marks, suggesting production for the Court in the last part of the reign, but the art seems to have flourished during the later Qing dynasty. It is likely that production of snuff bottles began to fall off after around 1900, with the gradual replacement of snuff by smoking tobacco, and the political upheavals that racked China from 1911 to 1949.