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Lot Essay
This eight-panel screen, inscribed with a date corresponding to the 22nd year of the Kangxi reign (1683), stands as a paradigmatic fusion of late seventeenth-century Chinese lacquer craftsmanship, literary cultivation, and elite social ritual. Its two sides present complementary auspicious themes—“Birthday Celebration” on the front and “A Hundred Birds Paying Homage to the Phoenix” on the reverse—each accompanied by paired poetic inscriptions that together construct a coherent system of symbolic blessing.
The seven-character quatrain on the front, “The ancient pine naturally attains its sky-reaching force… if you doubt my vision of the dragon-in-transformation, wait for tomorrow’s winds and rains to carry it aloft,” uses the evergreen vigor of the pine and the ascendant metamorphosis of the dragon to extol the recipient’s virtue and future prospects. On the reverse, the couplet “Auspicious signs increase as the radiant phoenix appears; auspicious blessings gather like myriad flowers” invokes the imagery of a phoenix descending and myriad blossoms offering auspice, metaphors for universal allegiance and the harmony of a flourishing age. Taken together—one inscription oriented toward the individual, the other toward the broader world—they heighten both the ceremonial solemnity of the birthday context and the praise of dynastic prosperity.
The comprehensive set of colophons—“Respectfully presented with bowed head by Guo Zanzhang, Assistant Department Director-Designate and Vice-Prefectural-Candidate. Design sketch by Liu Tingwen, styled Ziyang, of Hongdu (Nanchang). Respectfully carved by Chen Guangxian of Wuling (Changde) in the Studio of ‘Seeking-Not-to-Be-Right’”—clearly reveals the work’s entire chain of production: commissioned by the gentry official Guo Zanzhang, designed by the painter Liu Tingwen, and finally carved by the artisan Chen Guangxian. As such, the screen is not only a masterwork of craftsmanship but also a valuable material document recording cross-regional artistic collaboration (between Hongdu/Nanchang and Wuling/Changde) and the specific social practices of the Kangxi period.
The seven-character quatrain on the front, “The ancient pine naturally attains its sky-reaching force… if you doubt my vision of the dragon-in-transformation, wait for tomorrow’s winds and rains to carry it aloft,” uses the evergreen vigor of the pine and the ascendant metamorphosis of the dragon to extol the recipient’s virtue and future prospects. On the reverse, the couplet “Auspicious signs increase as the radiant phoenix appears; auspicious blessings gather like myriad flowers” invokes the imagery of a phoenix descending and myriad blossoms offering auspice, metaphors for universal allegiance and the harmony of a flourishing age. Taken together—one inscription oriented toward the individual, the other toward the broader world—they heighten both the ceremonial solemnity of the birthday context and the praise of dynastic prosperity.
The comprehensive set of colophons—“Respectfully presented with bowed head by Guo Zanzhang, Assistant Department Director-Designate and Vice-Prefectural-Candidate. Design sketch by Liu Tingwen, styled Ziyang, of Hongdu (Nanchang). Respectfully carved by Chen Guangxian of Wuling (Changde) in the Studio of ‘Seeking-Not-to-Be-Right’”—clearly reveals the work’s entire chain of production: commissioned by the gentry official Guo Zanzhang, designed by the painter Liu Tingwen, and finally carved by the artisan Chen Guangxian. As such, the screen is not only a masterwork of craftsmanship but also a valuable material document recording cross-regional artistic collaboration (between Hongdu/Nanchang and Wuling/Changde) and the specific social practices of the Kangxi period.