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Lot Essay
The platform bed, or ta, with its simple and restrained lines, represents one of the very few forms to be preserved in classical Chinese furniture design. By the Ming dynasty, platforms with four legs in various sizes had come into favour replacing earlier box-construction platforms. The present lot has a bold and simple design, with restrained lines and no relief decoration that fashioned from thick pieces of beautilfully grained wood, as how it was strikingly illustrated by Gustav Ecke in Chinese Domestic Furniture, 1962 (fig. 1).
The use of the daybed was manifold - during the day, it served as a sitting platform, and at night a bed. In Austere Luminosity of Classical Chinese Furniture, Berkeley, 2001, pp. 105-21, S. Handler discusses the origins and uses of this intriguing form. For a further explanation of the daybed as indoor and outdoor seating during the Ming dynasty, refer to Wang et al., op.cit, p. 6. For paintings depicting daybeds used in the above manner, refer to the Catalogue for the Special Exhibition of Furniture in Paintings, National Palace Museum, Taiwan, 1996, nos. 20 - 23 where scholars are variously depicted seated casually with legs draped over the side of the bed or seated cross-legged with both legs on the mat.
Daybeds with hoof feet and without stretchers are exceptionally rare. A citable example is the wooden model mentioned by Wang Zhengshu in his article, ‘Conjectures on Models of Ming-Period Furniture from the Pan Yunzheng Tomb in Shanghai’, Beyond the Screen, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, 1996, pp. 77-83, and illustrated by N. Berliner, op. cit., p. 150, no. 30b.
The use of the daybed was manifold - during the day, it served as a sitting platform, and at night a bed. In Austere Luminosity of Classical Chinese Furniture, Berkeley, 2001, pp. 105-21, S. Handler discusses the origins and uses of this intriguing form. For a further explanation of the daybed as indoor and outdoor seating during the Ming dynasty, refer to Wang et al., op.cit, p. 6. For paintings depicting daybeds used in the above manner, refer to the Catalogue for the Special Exhibition of Furniture in Paintings, National Palace Museum, Taiwan, 1996, nos. 20 - 23 where scholars are variously depicted seated casually with legs draped over the side of the bed or seated cross-legged with both legs on the mat.
Daybeds with hoof feet and without stretchers are exceptionally rare. A citable example is the wooden model mentioned by Wang Zhengshu in his article, ‘Conjectures on Models of Ming-Period Furniture from the Pan Yunzheng Tomb in Shanghai’, Beyond the Screen, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, 1996, pp. 77-83, and illustrated by N. Berliner, op. cit., p. 150, no. 30b.