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Lot Essay
The present pair of armchairs feature design elements which were later incorporated into hardwood furniture design. The structure where the top rail and armrests continue to become the rear posts and the front posts respectively, and share the characteristics of a ‘southern official’s armchair’, nanguanmaoyi. It has been suggested by Sarah Handler, ‘that perhaps the continuous arms evolved from bent bamboo construction’ (see ‘A Yokeback Chair for Sitting Tall’, Journal of the Classical Furniture Society, Spring 1993, pp. 4-23), as illustrated by a drawing of a bamboo chair in the Ming dynasty woodblock prints sancai tuhui (fig. 1).
The present pair of armchairs appears to have originated as a set of four, or possibly more; one of the set from C. T. Loo is illustrated in M. Beurdeley, Chinese Furniture, New York, 1979, p.49, pl.66 and is dated to the Qianlong period. No other extant examples of bamboo chair in comparable design and date is known, as they are much more fragile than their hard wood counterparts.
The present pair of armchairs appears to have originated as a set of four, or possibly more; one of the set from C. T. Loo is illustrated in M. Beurdeley, Chinese Furniture, New York, 1979, p.49, pl.66 and is dated to the Qianlong period. No other extant examples of bamboo chair in comparable design and date is known, as they are much more fragile than their hard wood counterparts.