QING DYNASTY, 18TH CENTURY

Details

A FINELY CARVED CINNABAR LACQUER ‘HUNDRED BOYS’ KANG CABINET
QING DYNASTY, 18TH CENTURY
The miniature cabinet with a smaller compartment on top and a larger one below opening to reveal a pair of small drawers. The four doors and two sides are finely carved with groups of young boys variously at play in a terraced garden landscape. Each door is mounted with gilt-metal handles and hinges cast with scrollwork, all above a shallow drawer carved similarly to the doors. The top is decorated with diaper pattern and the interiors and underside lacquered black. The whole is raised on four gilt-metal feet.
25 7/8 in. (65.7 cm.) high, 15 in. (38 cm.) wide, 6 3/8 in. (16.2 cm.) deep

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Lot Essay

Miniature cabinets of this type were made for display on a kang which served as a seat in the day and a bed at night. A cabinet of this type carved with figures in landscape is illustrated in Carved Lacquer in the Collection of the Palace Museum, Beijing, 1985, pl. 297. While the amusing subject of ‘hundred boys’ is a popular motif on lacquer objects from the Ming to Qing dynasty, it is rare to find it on lacquer cabinets with sides also similarly decorated. See a circular box and cover of the same theme as the present lot in the collection of the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco, illustrated in Haiwai Yichen, Lacquerware, Taipei, 1987, pl. 155.

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