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Lot Essay
Used to provide heat on cold winter days and as portable stoves for heating wine and delicacies, braziers were essential to everyday life. Hot coals were placed in metal warming pans which were set within the brazier stand. The extreme heat generated by the coals often damaged the brazier stands. Wooden brazier stands, such as the present example, were especially susceptible to damage, making this huanghuali example extremely rare. A baitong-mounted square huanghuali brazier, also raised on cabriole legs and terminating in scroll-form feet, was sold at Christie’s New York, Auspicious Treasures From the Blumenfield Collection, 22 March 2012, lot 1311.See, also, another huanghuali and jumu example carved with lion-masks at the corner and with shaped baitong mounts, described as a stand, sold at Christie’s New York, Important Chinese Furniture Formerly the Museum of Classical Chinese Furniture Collection, 19 September 1996, lot 77.
For a discussion of brazier stands (huopenjia), see Wang Shixiang, Connoisseurship of Chinese Furniture: Ming and Early Qing Dynasties, Hong Kong, 1990, vol. I, p. 100. Refer, also, Sarah Handler, "Perfumed Coals in Precious Braziers Burn," Austere Luminosity of Chinese Classical Furniture, Berkeley, 2001, ch. 19, pp. 319-331.
For a discussion of brazier stands (huopenjia), see Wang Shixiang, Connoisseurship of Chinese Furniture: Ming and Early Qing Dynasties, Hong Kong, 1990, vol. I, p. 100. Refer, also, Sarah Handler, "Perfumed Coals in Precious Braziers Burn," Austere Luminosity of Chinese Classical Furniture, Berkeley, 2001, ch. 19, pp. 319-331.