拍品專文
THE DECORATION
Chinese culture is primarily agrarian and those people in charge of government, the scholars and guardians of Confucian wisdom, held agriculture in high esteem, albeit rather in the fashion of the 19th Century European romantics, with a profound contempt for and some ignorance of the harsh reality of physical labour.
Ever since the Spring and Autumn period texts have been written concerning farming activities, and the three great Dynasties following the Song - the Yuan, Ming and Qing - each compiled their own official compendium on agriculture, based on the Southern Song work, the Gengzhi Tu. That of the Yuan was commissioned by Kublai Khan in AD1260 and was entitled Nong Sang Jiyao (Guidelines to Farming and Sericulture) and was intended as a pratical handbook for the general population. It was subsequently re-published several times by Kublai's successors. The Ming equivalent, the Nongzheng Quanshu (Complete Works on Agriculture) was compiled by Xu Guangqi, the illustrious student of Matteo Ricci's, in the 1630's. Here the Jesuit missionary input from European farming and irrigation technology is recorded in two separate chapters. Under the Qing, the Qinding Shoushi Tongkao (Encyclopaedia on the Harvest Periods, by Imperial Order) was compiled with a foreword by the Qianlong Emperor in 1742. This is a collection of texts and illustrations from previous works on agriculture, including the entire Gengzhi Tu.
The scenes are intended to be read chronologically as the process of growing and harvesting rice, certainly based on a series of early Qing printed woodblock illustrations. The five panels are 'read' in Chinese style, from top right to bottom left of the whole screen; each panel appears to contain three carefully-balanced illustrations of rustic endeavours which could be viewed in isolation, but are here deliberately linked (as often in classical Chinese handscroll painting) by long meandering stretches of tranquil waterways.
Recent research in London has established that most of the five-panel rice harvesting designs are closely based on one of the most important and influential sources of craft decoration during the Qing period, the Kangxi Emperor's edition of Yuzhi Gengzhi Tu. This Imperially-commissioned printed book continued the tradition established during the late Ming period, of providing artist-designed woodblock illustrations for craftsmen, who copied them from popular romances and works of fiction onto textiles, lacquer and above all porcelain (see the specific studies of such woodblock inspiration by Dr. Craig Clunas, Julia Curtis et al). But no object of this scale and sophistication has been hitherto recorded in lacquer; although one other smaller (three-leaf) throne screen, of Kangxi date and equally elaborate decoration, is in the Museum für Ostasiatische Kunst, Berlin, discussed and reproduced by Sir Harry Garner, Chinese Lacquers, p.237, pl.184; the date is suggested by Dr. Beatrix von Ragué, and Garner thought that an attribution to the 17th Century for both this screen and an accompanying throne was very reasonable. Garner draws attention to the fact that, as with the present throne screen, the brilliance of the mother-of-pearl decoration is achieved by careful selection of different-coloured shell, not by staining, painting or backing with metal foils.
The present screen is particularly important, because the immense precision and complexity in detail of the design suggest that it was specifically commissioned to reproduce prints from the original edition of Emperor Kangxi's Yuzhi Gengzhi Tu. It appears that the first edition was published in 1696, with forty-six woodcuts copying original designs by the court painter Jiao Bingzhen; see Otto Franke, Keng tschi t'u, Ackerbau und Seidengewinnung in China, Hamburg, 1913, passim. A one-volume edition was exhibited in New York, China House Gallery, 1984-5, from the Wallenstein Collection; the catalogue author discusses the vexed questions surrounding the identification of the first edition, and subsequent similar ones; Catalogue, no. 38
Careful comparison of the panel decoration on the present lot with the most complete reproduction of the woodblock prints, in Franke's 1913 book, reveals both how carefully the mother-of-pearl inlayers copied amusing and whimsical details of the prints; and also how ingeniously they adapted and combined elements to fit the requirements of five vertical narrative panels. The following description of the scenes includes cross-references to many of the original woodcuts reproduced in Franke, noted as (Franke, pl.x); other details might also be identified. It is particularly interesting that one or two 'set-piece' designs on the screen do not appear on the woodcuts that Franke reproduces, suggesting perhaps that another even fuller early edition of the scenes exists: the 'missing' scenes are constructed as carefully as the identifiable ones. In some cases, the original print has been reversed by the inlayers to provide a more balanced element in the composition; notably in the 'thanksgiving' scene at the bottom of the final panel (extreme left), where the kneeling family looks humbly towards the source of prosperity at the centre of the screen, rather than aimlessly looking outwards. In some cases, the central elements of two prints have been combined into one inlaid scene, so that the total fifteen vignettes, across five panels, include elements from at least thirteen prints reproduced by Franke, and almost certainly more if the extended edition used by the inlayers can be identified. The screen provides a spectacular example of the way in which worked-up 'painterly' compositions, commissioned by the Palace from the finest artists available, could enter the canon of craft production in different media.
The physical condition of the screen appears to be rather good, given the extreme fragility of the inlay surface, and its history. On the rice-harvesting side, the lacquer is somewhat matt, and there appears to have been a water trickle down the fourth panel. The entire front surface has lost lustre, to judge from the phoenix-decorated reverse, which is more reflective. Remarkably few mother-of-pearl inlays seem to be missing, though it is possible that some have been replaced in the distant past; and there is definitely some (probably minor) loss to gold-sheet inlay on a few highlights, as well as probably tarnishing of silver details. After taking professional advice, Christie's has resisted the temptation to have the surface cleaned or conserved. This ensures that the purchaser may undertake the first sophisticated conservation that the screen has undergone for a century, possibly preserving any original surface washes or fixative that might otherwise be lost. Some of the mother-of-pearl flakes have acquired a chalky surface, and again on professional advice those have been left undisturbed. Potential bidders are required to satisfy themselves as to the physical condition of the screen.
The shell inlay (nacre) is brilliantly iridescent in most areas; selected for its varied colour from the inner face of the haliotis or 'sea-ear' shell, which had served for centuries as the raw material for inlaying lacquers in China, Japan and Korea. However, the vastly increased sophistication of the Qing Dynasty craftsmen, reviving and extending a craft technique used regularly in China since the Tang period, make this huge screen the largest, most intricate and most challenging example of Qing Dynasty mother-of-pearl production in any published private or public collection. This is most clearly seen in the complex construction of individual figures and cottages, building up small jigsaw cut-out thin sections of coloured shell to maximise the contrast of the natural pink, green, blue, white and purple iridescence of the shell lining. Unlike many earlier and indeed contemporaneous shell-inlaid lacquer products, there is no evidence on this screen that the shell flakes and cut-outs are either stained or backed with tinted foil to enrich the natural tone.
The astonishing feature about the decoration on both sides of this screen is the care with which the mother-of-pearl inlay has been prepared and inset. On a screen of this dimension, it would be reasonable to expect that quality of detail would be much less than that found on the very many extant examples of Qing mother-of-pearl-inlaid lacquer (frequently if inaccurately known as 'lac burgauté', a name bestowed by French 19th Century scholars on porcelain enriched with inlaid lacquer decoration). But despite the massive size, the early Qing craftsmen have sacrificed remarkably little in their efforts to preserve the amusing details of the original book illustrations. In particular, the individual figures of labourers, ladies, children and animals are depicted with the greatest care; both in their physical appearance, and in the way in which different colours of nacre have been chosen to give the figures contrast in their clothing.
The screen was almost certainly designed to be seen lit partially from above, by natural light; it would also probably have stood at the top of a flight of steps in a Palace hall. For this reason, the extraordinary contrasts of the shell colouration can be most clearly seen by viewing the screen from a very low position in front, when overhead light falls obliquely rather than directly across the sections of shell.
THE INLAID DESIGNS
THE FRONT OF THE SCREEN
FIRST PANEL (extreme right)
Springtime: an old man and a child emerge from the doorway of their rustic house, surrounded by woven-bamboo fences carefully depicted by tiny strips of nacre laid alternately horizontally and vertically in symmetrical squares. Before them, two labourers remove globular packages of germinated rice-seeds from the river (Franke, pl.12); the subject is unclear on the screen, but named on the original print.
It is the river, set with long horizontal strips of nacreous 'water ripple', which provides the continuity for the chronological development of the rice-harvest story down and across the five panels on the front of the screen: it turns around rocky peninsulae, eddies around wooded islets, and forms occasional whirlpools as it meanders and glides; the tranquil movement carefully suggested by long strips, sudden whirls and eddies by groups of thin crescent-shaped shell closely recalling the somewhat coarse woodblock technique of the design source. A continuous riverside path is left as black lacquer, flanked by two roughly-parallel narrow bands of brownish-gold ground shell; outlines of larger natural features are delineated by thin strips of plain shell, and where river banks are raised with jutting clusters of rock, these are depicted by shell plaques incised with symmetrical grooves.
The scene leads down the riverside path to the central area; a family watch aimlessly from a thatched cottage, where a farming hoe stands unused. Beneath them, the planting season begins; a man drives a buffalo in the first ploughing, half submerged in the still waters of the padi (irrigated rice-growing enclosed area) (Franke, pl. 14).
SECOND PANEL (centre right)
The growing season is underway in front of a row of low rustic empty huts and houses; all the inhabitants are out in the padi, where the first shoots are appearing above waterlevel, and labourers pour a bucket of water in, to maintain the depth (Franke, part of pl.13). Others stoop to weed the crop, carry pails of water, or plant out new clumps; two chat across the field boundary, and all wear straw hats in the hot sun. It is meal time; two wives and a child bring baskets of food, one containing a minute cluster of chopsticks (Franke, pl. 33).
Beneath them, the season lengthens, but the work remains basically the same, maintaining the crop. In rice fields, where alternately curly-stalked and straight-stalked grain clusters now grow above the still water, labourers bend to weed and plant new growth, and carry water pails to maintain continuous irrigation (Franke, part of pl. 26). The young shoots are transplanted in bamboo baskets, and by hand; one transplanting labourer lopes past a cottage where the cuisine includes a fish, fowl and a basket of fruit hanging from the ceiling (Franke, part of pl. 13).
THIRD PANEL (centre)
Three principal scenes occupy this, the largest and probably the most important panel. Epitomising rural harmony, prosperity, divine beneficence, and ripe fruition, it would have formed an appropriate and auspicious backdrop for an exalted Imperial figure. At the top, a seated mother and child watch as two seated ladies bury their hands in baskets of grain, and one man rakes over a pile, while another throws a basketful in the air over a woven bamboo carpet, to winnow the chaff out (Franke, pl. 49).
The grain falls in a brown shower, which may well have been originally silver flakes now tarnished to a muddy tone. The traces of gold leaf still remaining on some details of the landscape decoration show that, as one would expect from other surviving early Qing Dynasty inlaid lacquer, precious metals were used sparingly but effectively in the decoration. Gold does not tarnish, but the applied sheet is exceedingly fragile, and possibly some portions have flaked off (this has happened on some of the phoenix beaks, as an example). There is no obvious decoration on the screen in silver sheet; but how appropriate, both in colour and symbolism, if silver (the most precious of precious metals to the Chinese) was used to depict the harvested rice grain, in ground-up powdery sparkling form. Either the fixative used, or environmental polution over nearly three centuries, appears to have therefore tarnished the surface of the grain piles on the three panels where it occurs; no doubt conservation would establish whether these discoloured areas of pure grain are indeed silver decoration.
Beneath them, two farmers lift down sheaves of the harvested rice crop on long poles from a third perched atop a tall stack of sheaves (Franke, pl. 41); at their right, four men energetically flail the stalks with double-poles onto a large mat (Franke, pl. 43).
In the foreground, harvesting the ripe crop continues in four padi; an old man watches from a pathway as three men stoop to cut the long clumps, two younger men carry off bundles, and a small boy lying on his back tugs at the simple shirt of the sixth (Franke, pl.41). The crop is ripe, the harvesting successful, and approaching completion: is it fanciful to associate this message with the bounty extended by the dignitary sitting in front of this symbolic throne screen?
FOURTH PANEL (centre left)
At the top, three ladies in headscarves winnow rice by beating it against slatted stools; small houses spaced around them contain a large basketwork sieve, and a pot of tea awaits between curtains tied back at a window. A small boy perching on a recalcitrant water buffalo leads the eye down across a plank bridge to the centre of the panel, where three men operate a simple winnowing device, and two others shake baskets of grain, beside a ladle, a broom and a hoe around baskets full of rice (Franke, pl.51). The river winds down to another scene of grain preparation; on a woven bamboo carpet, three labourers sieve grain and move heavily-laden baskets from an open shed, where an artisan operates a simple treadle to pound a dish, and another uses a big paddle to push it into a deep basket (Franke, pl. 45). The foreground is occupied by unharvested padi-fields of tall mature rice.
FIFTH PANEL (extreme left)
A long row of empty pavilions line the tranquilly-flowing river as it leads the eye from mountain foothills at the top, under a simple bridge, to an animated scene in mid-panel. Two farmers carry a full basket of rice into a storage shed where the warehouseman awaits them beside a high pile of rice; approaching the compound gateway, another farmer supports a double pannier of rice on a yoke, and a fourth stoops under a shoulder basket (Franke, pl.53). And the river winds down towards the logical conclusion of this 'harvesting' cycle; in an elegant shrine with fretwork windows, four adults and a child watched by a mother and child genuflect humbly before a household altar furnished with candles, a censer and piles of fruit beneath a munificent Buddhist deity; their empty pails, hoe and rake flank the altar (Franke, pl. 54).
THE BACK OF THE SCREEN
Unlike the front, the five panels on the reverse are not designed to be read continuously. The central section is the fullest, containing a large gold-leaf-beaked phoenix standing with wings spread and long double-plume tail tail curling down to a rocky pierced plinth; beneath it crouches another phoenix, apparently not designed with a long tail and therefore suggesting it is female. The phoenix is only supposed to appear in times of peace and prosperity, the second in importance of four supernatural Chinese creatures (dragon, phoenix, unicorn and tortoise). It presides over the southern quadrant of the heavens, and therefore symbolizes sun and warmth for summer and harvest. As a decorative element in ceremonial costume, the phoenix frequently appears on accessories associated with Empresses of China, which may suggest a possible location for the screen within the ladies' area of the Beijing Palace precincts.
The rockwork is formed as a large area of minutely crushed mother-of-pearl of dark golden hue, broken by holes typical of Taihe-type rocks, each outlined in plain shell. The phoenix plumage is very carefully constructed from alternating nacre of greenish and pinkish roundels at the tips of the shorter feathers, delicately inset. Clusters of long-stemmed leafy bamboo rise from the bottom of the panels and large-blossomed peony curls upwards around the lower phoenix, the shell strips so thin that some have lifted off. The birds are overhung by a large leafy canopy of wutong tree, the only one on which by tradition a phoenix will perch. The 'Chinese parasol tree' is inlaid with bunches of the trefoil leaves, hanging from gnarled curling branches formed from short sections of nacre, carefully left with outlined holes to suggest boughs and new growth; while the long treetrunk is outlined by, and set with, horizontal short strips of plain nacre, the connecting gaps entirely filled with mottled ground shell. Around the whole design drift long elaborate eddies of cloud, in distinctive three-lobed sections of pearl, resembling the long gently swirling clouds found on Transitional blue and white porcelain.
The four flanking back panels are designed to face inwards, to the centre, as on the front, with each formed as a single phoenix facing outwards, but with the head turned back towards the centre: each beak is set with gold sheet. On the two outer panels, the phoenix perches high on a branch of the long trunk; on the inner two, it rests firmly atop rockwork while the tree rises steeply above it, and the nacreous clouds drift densely but assymetrically.
Chinese culture is primarily agrarian and those people in charge of government, the scholars and guardians of Confucian wisdom, held agriculture in high esteem, albeit rather in the fashion of the 19th Century European romantics, with a profound contempt for and some ignorance of the harsh reality of physical labour.
Ever since the Spring and Autumn period texts have been written concerning farming activities, and the three great Dynasties following the Song - the Yuan, Ming and Qing - each compiled their own official compendium on agriculture, based on the Southern Song work, the Gengzhi Tu. That of the Yuan was commissioned by Kublai Khan in AD1260 and was entitled Nong Sang Jiyao (Guidelines to Farming and Sericulture) and was intended as a pratical handbook for the general population. It was subsequently re-published several times by Kublai's successors. The Ming equivalent, the Nongzheng Quanshu (Complete Works on Agriculture) was compiled by Xu Guangqi, the illustrious student of Matteo Ricci's, in the 1630's. Here the Jesuit missionary input from European farming and irrigation technology is recorded in two separate chapters. Under the Qing, the Qinding Shoushi Tongkao (Encyclopaedia on the Harvest Periods, by Imperial Order) was compiled with a foreword by the Qianlong Emperor in 1742. This is a collection of texts and illustrations from previous works on agriculture, including the entire Gengzhi Tu.
The scenes are intended to be read chronologically as the process of growing and harvesting rice, certainly based on a series of early Qing printed woodblock illustrations. The five panels are 'read' in Chinese style, from top right to bottom left of the whole screen; each panel appears to contain three carefully-balanced illustrations of rustic endeavours which could be viewed in isolation, but are here deliberately linked (as often in classical Chinese handscroll painting) by long meandering stretches of tranquil waterways.
Recent research in London has established that most of the five-panel rice harvesting designs are closely based on one of the most important and influential sources of craft decoration during the Qing period, the Kangxi Emperor's edition of Yuzhi Gengzhi Tu. This Imperially-commissioned printed book continued the tradition established during the late Ming period, of providing artist-designed woodblock illustrations for craftsmen, who copied them from popular romances and works of fiction onto textiles, lacquer and above all porcelain (see the specific studies of such woodblock inspiration by Dr. Craig Clunas, Julia Curtis et al). But no object of this scale and sophistication has been hitherto recorded in lacquer; although one other smaller (three-leaf) throne screen, of Kangxi date and equally elaborate decoration, is in the Museum für Ostasiatische Kunst, Berlin, discussed and reproduced by Sir Harry Garner, Chinese Lacquers, p.237, pl.184; the date is suggested by Dr. Beatrix von Ragué, and Garner thought that an attribution to the 17th Century for both this screen and an accompanying throne was very reasonable. Garner draws attention to the fact that, as with the present throne screen, the brilliance of the mother-of-pearl decoration is achieved by careful selection of different-coloured shell, not by staining, painting or backing with metal foils.
The present screen is particularly important, because the immense precision and complexity in detail of the design suggest that it was specifically commissioned to reproduce prints from the original edition of Emperor Kangxi's Yuzhi Gengzhi Tu. It appears that the first edition was published in 1696, with forty-six woodcuts copying original designs by the court painter Jiao Bingzhen; see Otto Franke, Keng tschi t'u, Ackerbau und Seidengewinnung in China, Hamburg, 1913, passim. A one-volume edition was exhibited in New York, China House Gallery, 1984-5, from the Wallenstein Collection; the catalogue author discusses the vexed questions surrounding the identification of the first edition, and subsequent similar ones; Catalogue, no. 38
Careful comparison of the panel decoration on the present lot with the most complete reproduction of the woodblock prints, in Franke's 1913 book, reveals both how carefully the mother-of-pearl inlayers copied amusing and whimsical details of the prints; and also how ingeniously they adapted and combined elements to fit the requirements of five vertical narrative panels. The following description of the scenes includes cross-references to many of the original woodcuts reproduced in Franke, noted as (Franke, pl.x); other details might also be identified. It is particularly interesting that one or two 'set-piece' designs on the screen do not appear on the woodcuts that Franke reproduces, suggesting perhaps that another even fuller early edition of the scenes exists: the 'missing' scenes are constructed as carefully as the identifiable ones. In some cases, the original print has been reversed by the inlayers to provide a more balanced element in the composition; notably in the 'thanksgiving' scene at the bottom of the final panel (extreme left), where the kneeling family looks humbly towards the source of prosperity at the centre of the screen, rather than aimlessly looking outwards. In some cases, the central elements of two prints have been combined into one inlaid scene, so that the total fifteen vignettes, across five panels, include elements from at least thirteen prints reproduced by Franke, and almost certainly more if the extended edition used by the inlayers can be identified. The screen provides a spectacular example of the way in which worked-up 'painterly' compositions, commissioned by the Palace from the finest artists available, could enter the canon of craft production in different media.
The physical condition of the screen appears to be rather good, given the extreme fragility of the inlay surface, and its history. On the rice-harvesting side, the lacquer is somewhat matt, and there appears to have been a water trickle down the fourth panel. The entire front surface has lost lustre, to judge from the phoenix-decorated reverse, which is more reflective. Remarkably few mother-of-pearl inlays seem to be missing, though it is possible that some have been replaced in the distant past; and there is definitely some (probably minor) loss to gold-sheet inlay on a few highlights, as well as probably tarnishing of silver details. After taking professional advice, Christie's has resisted the temptation to have the surface cleaned or conserved. This ensures that the purchaser may undertake the first sophisticated conservation that the screen has undergone for a century, possibly preserving any original surface washes or fixative that might otherwise be lost. Some of the mother-of-pearl flakes have acquired a chalky surface, and again on professional advice those have been left undisturbed. Potential bidders are required to satisfy themselves as to the physical condition of the screen.
The shell inlay (nacre) is brilliantly iridescent in most areas; selected for its varied colour from the inner face of the haliotis or 'sea-ear' shell, which had served for centuries as the raw material for inlaying lacquers in China, Japan and Korea. However, the vastly increased sophistication of the Qing Dynasty craftsmen, reviving and extending a craft technique used regularly in China since the Tang period, make this huge screen the largest, most intricate and most challenging example of Qing Dynasty mother-of-pearl production in any published private or public collection. This is most clearly seen in the complex construction of individual figures and cottages, building up small jigsaw cut-out thin sections of coloured shell to maximise the contrast of the natural pink, green, blue, white and purple iridescence of the shell lining. Unlike many earlier and indeed contemporaneous shell-inlaid lacquer products, there is no evidence on this screen that the shell flakes and cut-outs are either stained or backed with tinted foil to enrich the natural tone.
The astonishing feature about the decoration on both sides of this screen is the care with which the mother-of-pearl inlay has been prepared and inset. On a screen of this dimension, it would be reasonable to expect that quality of detail would be much less than that found on the very many extant examples of Qing mother-of-pearl-inlaid lacquer (frequently if inaccurately known as 'lac burgauté', a name bestowed by French 19th Century scholars on porcelain enriched with inlaid lacquer decoration). But despite the massive size, the early Qing craftsmen have sacrificed remarkably little in their efforts to preserve the amusing details of the original book illustrations. In particular, the individual figures of labourers, ladies, children and animals are depicted with the greatest care; both in their physical appearance, and in the way in which different colours of nacre have been chosen to give the figures contrast in their clothing.
The screen was almost certainly designed to be seen lit partially from above, by natural light; it would also probably have stood at the top of a flight of steps in a Palace hall. For this reason, the extraordinary contrasts of the shell colouration can be most clearly seen by viewing the screen from a very low position in front, when overhead light falls obliquely rather than directly across the sections of shell.
THE INLAID DESIGNS
THE FRONT OF THE SCREEN
FIRST PANEL (extreme right)
Springtime: an old man and a child emerge from the doorway of their rustic house, surrounded by woven-bamboo fences carefully depicted by tiny strips of nacre laid alternately horizontally and vertically in symmetrical squares. Before them, two labourers remove globular packages of germinated rice-seeds from the river (Franke, pl.12); the subject is unclear on the screen, but named on the original print.
It is the river, set with long horizontal strips of nacreous 'water ripple', which provides the continuity for the chronological development of the rice-harvest story down and across the five panels on the front of the screen: it turns around rocky peninsulae, eddies around wooded islets, and forms occasional whirlpools as it meanders and glides; the tranquil movement carefully suggested by long strips, sudden whirls and eddies by groups of thin crescent-shaped shell closely recalling the somewhat coarse woodblock technique of the design source. A continuous riverside path is left as black lacquer, flanked by two roughly-parallel narrow bands of brownish-gold ground shell; outlines of larger natural features are delineated by thin strips of plain shell, and where river banks are raised with jutting clusters of rock, these are depicted by shell plaques incised with symmetrical grooves.
The scene leads down the riverside path to the central area; a family watch aimlessly from a thatched cottage, where a farming hoe stands unused. Beneath them, the planting season begins; a man drives a buffalo in the first ploughing, half submerged in the still waters of the padi (irrigated rice-growing enclosed area) (Franke, pl. 14).
SECOND PANEL (centre right)
The growing season is underway in front of a row of low rustic empty huts and houses; all the inhabitants are out in the padi, where the first shoots are appearing above waterlevel, and labourers pour a bucket of water in, to maintain the depth (Franke, part of pl.13). Others stoop to weed the crop, carry pails of water, or plant out new clumps; two chat across the field boundary, and all wear straw hats in the hot sun. It is meal time; two wives and a child bring baskets of food, one containing a minute cluster of chopsticks (Franke, pl. 33).
Beneath them, the season lengthens, but the work remains basically the same, maintaining the crop. In rice fields, where alternately curly-stalked and straight-stalked grain clusters now grow above the still water, labourers bend to weed and plant new growth, and carry water pails to maintain continuous irrigation (Franke, part of pl. 26). The young shoots are transplanted in bamboo baskets, and by hand; one transplanting labourer lopes past a cottage where the cuisine includes a fish, fowl and a basket of fruit hanging from the ceiling (Franke, part of pl. 13).
THIRD PANEL (centre)
Three principal scenes occupy this, the largest and probably the most important panel. Epitomising rural harmony, prosperity, divine beneficence, and ripe fruition, it would have formed an appropriate and auspicious backdrop for an exalted Imperial figure. At the top, a seated mother and child watch as two seated ladies bury their hands in baskets of grain, and one man rakes over a pile, while another throws a basketful in the air over a woven bamboo carpet, to winnow the chaff out (Franke, pl. 49).
The grain falls in a brown shower, which may well have been originally silver flakes now tarnished to a muddy tone. The traces of gold leaf still remaining on some details of the landscape decoration show that, as one would expect from other surviving early Qing Dynasty inlaid lacquer, precious metals were used sparingly but effectively in the decoration. Gold does not tarnish, but the applied sheet is exceedingly fragile, and possibly some portions have flaked off (this has happened on some of the phoenix beaks, as an example). There is no obvious decoration on the screen in silver sheet; but how appropriate, both in colour and symbolism, if silver (the most precious of precious metals to the Chinese) was used to depict the harvested rice grain, in ground-up powdery sparkling form. Either the fixative used, or environmental polution over nearly three centuries, appears to have therefore tarnished the surface of the grain piles on the three panels where it occurs; no doubt conservation would establish whether these discoloured areas of pure grain are indeed silver decoration.
Beneath them, two farmers lift down sheaves of the harvested rice crop on long poles from a third perched atop a tall stack of sheaves (Franke, pl. 41); at their right, four men energetically flail the stalks with double-poles onto a large mat (Franke, pl. 43).
In the foreground, harvesting the ripe crop continues in four padi; an old man watches from a pathway as three men stoop to cut the long clumps, two younger men carry off bundles, and a small boy lying on his back tugs at the simple shirt of the sixth (Franke, pl.41). The crop is ripe, the harvesting successful, and approaching completion: is it fanciful to associate this message with the bounty extended by the dignitary sitting in front of this symbolic throne screen?
FOURTH PANEL (centre left)
At the top, three ladies in headscarves winnow rice by beating it against slatted stools; small houses spaced around them contain a large basketwork sieve, and a pot of tea awaits between curtains tied back at a window. A small boy perching on a recalcitrant water buffalo leads the eye down across a plank bridge to the centre of the panel, where three men operate a simple winnowing device, and two others shake baskets of grain, beside a ladle, a broom and a hoe around baskets full of rice (Franke, pl.51). The river winds down to another scene of grain preparation; on a woven bamboo carpet, three labourers sieve grain and move heavily-laden baskets from an open shed, where an artisan operates a simple treadle to pound a dish, and another uses a big paddle to push it into a deep basket (Franke, pl. 45). The foreground is occupied by unharvested padi-fields of tall mature rice.
FIFTH PANEL (extreme left)
A long row of empty pavilions line the tranquilly-flowing river as it leads the eye from mountain foothills at the top, under a simple bridge, to an animated scene in mid-panel. Two farmers carry a full basket of rice into a storage shed where the warehouseman awaits them beside a high pile of rice; approaching the compound gateway, another farmer supports a double pannier of rice on a yoke, and a fourth stoops under a shoulder basket (Franke, pl.53). And the river winds down towards the logical conclusion of this 'harvesting' cycle; in an elegant shrine with fretwork windows, four adults and a child watched by a mother and child genuflect humbly before a household altar furnished with candles, a censer and piles of fruit beneath a munificent Buddhist deity; their empty pails, hoe and rake flank the altar (Franke, pl. 54).
THE BACK OF THE SCREEN
Unlike the front, the five panels on the reverse are not designed to be read continuously. The central section is the fullest, containing a large gold-leaf-beaked phoenix standing with wings spread and long double-plume tail tail curling down to a rocky pierced plinth; beneath it crouches another phoenix, apparently not designed with a long tail and therefore suggesting it is female. The phoenix is only supposed to appear in times of peace and prosperity, the second in importance of four supernatural Chinese creatures (dragon, phoenix, unicorn and tortoise). It presides over the southern quadrant of the heavens, and therefore symbolizes sun and warmth for summer and harvest. As a decorative element in ceremonial costume, the phoenix frequently appears on accessories associated with Empresses of China, which may suggest a possible location for the screen within the ladies' area of the Beijing Palace precincts.
The rockwork is formed as a large area of minutely crushed mother-of-pearl of dark golden hue, broken by holes typical of Taihe-type rocks, each outlined in plain shell. The phoenix plumage is very carefully constructed from alternating nacre of greenish and pinkish roundels at the tips of the shorter feathers, delicately inset. Clusters of long-stemmed leafy bamboo rise from the bottom of the panels and large-blossomed peony curls upwards around the lower phoenix, the shell strips so thin that some have lifted off. The birds are overhung by a large leafy canopy of wutong tree, the only one on which by tradition a phoenix will perch. The 'Chinese parasol tree' is inlaid with bunches of the trefoil leaves, hanging from gnarled curling branches formed from short sections of nacre, carefully left with outlined holes to suggest boughs and new growth; while the long treetrunk is outlined by, and set with, horizontal short strips of plain nacre, the connecting gaps entirely filled with mottled ground shell. Around the whole design drift long elaborate eddies of cloud, in distinctive three-lobed sections of pearl, resembling the long gently swirling clouds found on Transitional blue and white porcelain.
The four flanking back panels are designed to face inwards, to the centre, as on the front, with each formed as a single phoenix facing outwards, but with the head turned back towards the centre: each beak is set with gold sheet. On the two outer panels, the phoenix perches high on a branch of the long trunk; on the inner two, it rests firmly atop rockwork while the tree rises steeply above it, and the nacreous clouds drift densely but assymetrically.