Antique Altar Sideboard in Lacquered Pine, China, 1900

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This antique lacquered altar sideboard in pine wood is a Chinese four-door cabinet with an overhanging top on bracket ends … Read more This antique lacquered altar sideboard in pine wood is a Chinese four-door cabinet with an overhanging top on bracket ends and crackled ivory lacquer. It originates from northern China, from the Qing dynasty, where pine was lacquered in several superimposed coats.The top that overhangs the sides and finishes in a bracket comes from the altar table, the tiao’an that presided over the main room and carried the censer and the ancestral tablets. Transferred to a storage cabinet, that form kept the prestige of its ritual origin.The case is solid pine with mortise-and-tenon joinery. Four panel doors open in two pairs onto an interior with a shelf. The pulls are brass rings on rosettes and the apron is cut into brackets beneath each stile.The surface is what the piece is about: an ivory-white lacquer applied over a garnet ground, now broken into a fine crackle network that lets the lower colour appear. Along the edges the ivory has gone and the garnet dominates. The top, by contrast, has worn back almost entirely to bare pine and shows a use sheen.Its length and overhanging top make it a dining-room sideboard, an entrance console or a gallery cabinet. The crackle asks for frontal light and a plain wall; against a dark ground it loses half its reading.

Dimensions: Length 223 cm – Width 40 cm – Height 79 cm. Style: Chinese altar. Materials and techniques: Pine wood; brass hardware; mortise-and-tenon joinery; ivory lacquer over garnet ground. Place of origin: China. Period: Qing dynasty. Date of manufacture: Circa 1900. Condition: Good. Original crackled lacquer with losses along the edges and a top stripped by use. Wear consistent with age and use. See less