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Lot Essay
Comfortable, elegant, and somewhat less formal than tall yokeback chairs with extended arm and top rails, the 'southern official's hat', nanguanmaoyi, form was very popular during the Ming dynasty, and variations on it continued to be made throughout most of the Qing period.
For a comprehensive view of the evolution of the yokeback chair, see Sarah Handler, 'A Yokeback Chair for Sitting Tall,' Journal of the Chinese Classical Furniture Society, Spring 1993, pp. 4-23, where the author sheds light on the development of the yokeback chair as one of the earliest chair types in China. The first known depiction of the yokeback chair is from a cave painting in Dunhuang, dated 538. From that early period in Chinese history, the yokeback chair developed into one of the most popular and successful forms of furniture. The author writes, "The yokeback chair is the most vertical of Chinese Chairs. It forces the body to assume a posture of upright rectitude, and hence it is natural and inevitable that it carries with it a significance of honor, dignity, and power. In both the ancient and modern worlds, verticality - in tower, cathedral, and skyscraper - asserts soaring authority." The present continuous yokeback chairs, with their extraordinary height and elegance of form, certainly would have lent the seated owner or guest of honor the sense of dignity and power that Handler suggests.
A pair of huanghuali 'southern official's hat chairs' from the Museum of Chinese Classical Furniture Collection, similarly left undecorated with the exception of a ruyi-form roundel on the backsplat, was sold at Christie's New York, Important Chinese Furniture, Formerly the Museum of Classical Chinese Furniture Collection, 19 September 1996, lot 47. The deep carving of the roundels on both sets is of exceptional quality, but kept minimal to display the natural beauty of the wood.
For a comprehensive view of the evolution of the yokeback chair, see Sarah Handler, 'A Yokeback Chair for Sitting Tall,' Journal of the Chinese Classical Furniture Society, Spring 1993, pp. 4-23, where the author sheds light on the development of the yokeback chair as one of the earliest chair types in China. The first known depiction of the yokeback chair is from a cave painting in Dunhuang, dated 538. From that early period in Chinese history, the yokeback chair developed into one of the most popular and successful forms of furniture. The author writes, "The yokeback chair is the most vertical of Chinese Chairs. It forces the body to assume a posture of upright rectitude, and hence it is natural and inevitable that it carries with it a significance of honor, dignity, and power. In both the ancient and modern worlds, verticality - in tower, cathedral, and skyscraper - asserts soaring authority." The present continuous yokeback chairs, with their extraordinary height and elegance of form, certainly would have lent the seated owner or guest of honor the sense of dignity and power that Handler suggests.
A pair of huanghuali 'southern official's hat chairs' from the Museum of Chinese Classical Furniture Collection, similarly left undecorated with the exception of a ruyi-form roundel on the backsplat, was sold at Christie's New York, Important Chinese Furniture, Formerly the Museum of Classical Chinese Furniture Collection, 19 September 1996, lot 47. The deep carving of the roundels on both sets is of exceptional quality, but kept minimal to display the natural beauty of the wood.