Roundback Chair Imitating Bamboo

Original Language Title仿竹材黃花梨木圈椅清康熙

CultureChinese

DateKangxi period (1662-1722)

MediumHuanghuali wood

DimensionsOverall: 39 3/8 × 27 1/4 × 20 inches (100 × 69.22 × 50.8 cm)

Credit LinePurchase: William Rockhill Nelson Trust

Object number46-78/1

On View

On view

Gallery Location

Collections

East Asian Art

Terms

DescriptionOne of a set of four huanghuali horseshoe armchairs carved to simulate bamboo, the five-part backs have exposed tenon overlapping pressure pin scarf joints, with a frame splat with a dragon roundel and huamu panels. The front and rear posts continue through the seat frame to form the legs which are square on the inside edge beneath the seat frame; these are joined by stretchers at the same height. A similarly carved spandrel is fixed to the rear posts and an apron pegged to the inner edge of the legs and sear frame. The soft matting seat has been replaced with hard mat. Kangxi Period, probably late 17th-early 18th century.Exhibition History

Exhibition History

The Art of the Forbidden City, Minneapolis Institute of Arts, November 30 – February 28, 1955.

Gallery Label

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.

Provenance

With Otto Burchard (1892-1965), Peking (now Beijing), China and New York, by February 1946 [1];

Purchased from Burchard by The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, 1946.

NOTES:

[1] This object was part of a group of furniture Otto Burchard brought with him when he moved from China to the United States in 1946. This group was first mentioned by Laurence Sickman, Curator of Asian Art, in a letter to J.C. Nichols, Nelson-Atkins Trustee, February 19, 1946, Nelson-Atkins Archives, RG80-15 William Rockhill Nelson Trust Records, box 9, folder 11.

Published References

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.).

Helena Fung, From East to West and back again: A critical review of the cross-cultural consumption, collecting and historiography of Chinese ‘classic’ furniture from the Ming and early Qing dynasties, PhD diss. (University of Glasgow, 2024), 212, 293, (repro.).

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