Lu Kuisheng (Lu Dong) (?-1850) is one of very few recorded Chinese lacquer artists and one of three of the best known lacquer artists of his generation. He is thought to have been active from the end of the Qianlong period through to the Daoguang period and is known to have worked on a wide range of lacquer, embellished lacquer, snuff bottles and sand-lacquer inkstones in Yangzhou, employing a very distinctive style. Lu was one of the rare craftsmen who was able to transcend the social barriers imposed by his upbringing and be taken seriously by the literati as an artist, and he was one of the very few to find a place in the literature of the scholar class and a number of his inkstones can be found in the in the Palace Museum collection, Beijing. He was also known for his large scale lacquer carvings and a set of four red lacquer panels bearing his seal were illustrated by P. Moss, In Scholar's Taste, Hong Kong, 1983, pp. 210-211, where the author notes the highly unusual diaper bands, 'unlike anything seen previously in lacquerwork. Diapers representing the sky, the ground and various architectural surfaces are each differently and contrastingly done with remarkable detail.' The unusual diaper-ground on the present set of stands, the distinctive carving of the birds and large size of the objects all point towards Lu Kuisheng's workshop.

Although an unusual medium for incense stands, a number of carved red lacquer stands in museum collections are known. A mid-Qing red lacquer stand of similar form carved with dragons in the Palace Museum collection, originally placed in the Qianqiu Pavilion in the Summer Palace, Beijing is illustrated in A Treasury of Ming and Qing Dynasty Palace Furniture, Vol. 1, Beijing, 2007, p. 275, no. 314.