Roundback Chair Imitating Bamboo
- 202
The Art of the Forbidden City, Minneapolis Institute of Arts, November 30 – February 28, 1955.
Bamboo is plentiful in China and so is widely used for cheap furniture. In Chinese culture, however, bamboo also symbolizes humility, flexibility, and endurance. Wealthy people who sat in these chairs made of costly huanghuali wood may have been reminded of these moral qualities.
Dr. Otto Burchard;
Purchased from Dr. Otto Burchard by The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, 1946.
M. Medly, “World Furniture,” in World Furniture: An Illustrated History, by Helena Hayward, ed., Douglas Ash et al., (London: Paul Hamlyn, 1965), 278, fig. 1067 (repro.).
Robert Hatfield Ellsworth, Chinese Furniture: Hardwood Examples of the Ming and Early Chʼing Dynasties (New York: Random House, 1971), 241, pl. 16 (repro.).
Laurence Sickman, “Chinese Classic Furniture,” in Transactions of the Oriental Ceramic Society 1977-78, vol. 42 (London: Society, 1979), 1-12, pl. 4a (repro.).
Deborah Emont Scott, ed., The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art: A Handbook of the Collection, 7th ed. (Kansas City, MO: Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 2008), 370, no. 267 (repro.).
