17TH CENTURY

Wang Shixiang in Connoisseurship of Chinese Furniture notes that bookcases such as these are used for both display and storage and are often called shjia or shuge both of which mean bookcase but because objects other than books were placed upon them, he refers to them as ‘open shelf stands’. These open shelf stands take the form of four simple uprights with horizontal shelves the full width of the piece, sometimes, as is the case here, with a three-sided gallery that outlines a shelf called an anquankou (partitioned openings). Both elaborate and simple designs emanate from the Ming dynasty. When the shelves are divided and are placed at different heights and are different lengths, although their decoration may be simple, they date from the Qing dynasty. This is borne out by the famous set of paintings in the collection of the Palace Museum, Beijing, The Twelve Beauties of the Yuanmingyuan that date from the Kangxi period, or more specifically 1709 – 1723. For a comprehensive discussion of these paintings see Early Qing Furniture in a Set of Qing Dynasty Court Paintings by Tian Jiaqing (Orientations, January 1993).

Of the ‘open shelf stands’ or bookcases known nearly all the hardwood (rather than lacquer) examples have drawers. Sarah Handler in the Winter 1993 Journal of the Museum of Classical Chinese Furniture, quoting from George Kates Chinese Household Furniture suggests that the common term for drawers chouti implies that they are “pullable trays” and that they would be taken from the bookcase to the table which, of course, had no drawers.

No other pairs of ‘open shelf stands’ or bookcases are known although sets must have existed as Wen Zhenheng suggests in his late Ming publication Zhang wu zhi jiao zhu (The Treatise on Superfluous Things) that bookcases should be “7 ft high and 14 ft broad” with the often quoted advice to “avoid putting books on the bottom shelf, where they will be spoiled by damp”, taken from Chinese Furniture by Craig Clunas.