A RARE PAIR OF MELON-FORM HUANGHUALI STOOLS

The level of difficulty of precisely carving and fitting the individual lobes to form the ‘melon’ shape of the present pair of stools resulted in shockingly few surviving examples. The present pair of melon-form stool are among eight known stools of this design, four of which have been published. Of these four stools, three are inset with wood panels like the present pair, including the pair illustrated by R. Jacobsen and N. Grindley in Classical Chinese Furniture in the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, Minneapolis, 1999, pp. 44-5, pl. 5, and the single stool, formerly in the Gustav Ecke Collection, illustrated by Ecke in Chinese Domestic Furniture, Vermont and Tokyo, 1962, p. 141, pl. 112. A single huanghuali stool set with marble top was sold in Lacquer, Jade, Bronze, Ink: The Irving Collection – Day Sale; Christie’s New York, 21 March 2019, lot 1215.