17TH CENTURY

The top is finely decorated in varying shades of brown, black and red with birds amidst blossoming flowers and jagged rocks, above plain aprons, spandrels and raised on round-section legs all decorated with scrolling lotus. The orientation of the decoration on the top suggests the table was intended to be placed against a wall and to be viewed from a specific side. A similarly decorated polychrome red lacquer table, dated to the seventeenth century, is illustrated by N. Berliner in Beyond the Screen: Chinese Furniture of the 16^th and 17^th Centuries, Boston, 1996, p. 126-7, no. 18. Compare, also, another polychrome-decorated red lacquer side corner-leg table, dated to the early Qing period in the Qing Court Collection, and illustrated in The Complete Collection of Treasures of the Palace Museum - 53 - Furniture of the Ming and Qing Dynasties, Hong Kong, 2002, p. 117, no. 100.