Folding screen
Category
Furniture
Date
c. 1660 - c. 1680
Materials
Incised lacquer, gold leaf, paint, wood, metal
Measurements
2810 x 3120 x 15 mm
Place of origin
Jingdezhen
Order this imageCollection
Ham House, Surrey
NT 1140026
Summary
A kuan cai (‘incised polychrome’) lacquer folding screen, comprising six panels (originally probably 12 panels), made in China, c. 1660–80. Decorated on one side with scenes in the grounds of a palace, with ladies engaged in various amusements such as standing on a swing, watching a cock fight, playing football and making music, surrounded by a border combining birds and flowers, landscape elements and mythical animals. Decorated on the other side with birds (including egrets, pheasants, magpies and phoenixes) among picturesque rocks and flowers, surrounded by a border containing variously shaped cartouches with birds and flowers, precious objects and landscapes (some with human figures or mythical animals).
Full description
Incised lacquer was known in Europe as ‘Coromandel lacquer’, after the trading posts on the Coromandel coast of India via which it was shipped to Europe. However, it was developed in China during the 17th century, originally for the domestic market. The Chinese name for this type of lacquer, kuan cai or ‘engraved polychrome’, refers to the technique of cutting the decoration into the black lacquer and then painting and gilding the cut areas. This makes the screens look like large coloured prints, but with black backgrounds. In fact, the scenes and motifs were likely inspired by Chinese woodblock prints and printed books, which had reached a high level of sophistication in the 17th century. The scenes of life in and around a palace on one side of this screen were inspired by prints reproducing the paintings of Qiu Ying (c.1494 – c.1552), showing idealised views of life at the imperial court of the Han dynasty in the first century BCE. The imagery on the other side of the screen is in the well-established Chinese pictorial tradition of symbolic bird and flower motifs. The prunus, for instance, stands for fragile, evanescent beauty; the egret for the upright, virtuous government official; the pheasant for beauty; the peony for renown; and the magpie for long life. The mythical phoenix, considered to be the ‘king of birds’, embodied supreme gracefulness. Europeans took a liking to kuan cai screens and it appears that they also began to be produced for export during the second half of the 17th century. European viewers are unlikely to have understood the subtleties of the Chinese imagery, but they seem to have valued them for their material sophistication and as emblems of the distant and admired empire of China. This screen would originally have had 12 panels, of which six are left. It may have been divided into two six-fold screens at some point. Coromandel or kuan cai lacquer was also often cut up to be used as veneer on European furniture (examples of which can also be seen at Ham).
Provenance
Purchased by HM Government, 1948, and transferred to the ownership of the Victoria and Albert Museum; on loan to the National Trust from 1990; transferred to the National Trust, 2002.