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Lot Essay
Smaller and less formal than the yoke-back or horseshoe back chair, the low-back armchair is often more ornately decorated. The low-back armchair is often called a "rose chair" (meiguiyi), a confusing term which current scholarship has not satisfactorally explained. The form is also known as a "writing chair" (wenyi), but neither of these terms appear before the 20th century.
Compare a nearly identical chair in the collection of the National Palace Museum, Beijing, illustrated in Zhongguo meishu quanji, Gongyi meishu bian, II, zhu mu ya jiao qi, p. 45 and 118, no. 142.
Refer, also, a very similar chair missing one of the three circular struts, in the collection of the Central Academy of Arts and Crafts, illustrated in Pu Anguo, Ming qing su shi jiaju, Hangzhou, 1999, p. 194, no. 26.
The same chair appears to be illustrated in Wang Shixiang, Classic Chinese Furniture - Ming and Early Qing Dynasties, London, 1986, pl. 43, and also published in Wang Shixiang, Connoisseurship of Chinese Furniture: Ming and Early Qing Dynasties, Hong Kong, 1989, vol. I, p. 40, vol. II, p. 42, A68.
Compare a nearly identical chair in the collection of the National Palace Museum, Beijing, illustrated in Zhongguo meishu quanji, Gongyi meishu bian, II, zhu mu ya jiao qi, p. 45 and 118, no. 142.
Refer, also, a very similar chair missing one of the three circular struts, in the collection of the Central Academy of Arts and Crafts, illustrated in Pu Anguo, Ming qing su shi jiaju, Hangzhou, 1999, p. 194, no. 26.
The same chair appears to be illustrated in Wang Shixiang, Classic Chinese Furniture - Ming and Early Qing Dynasties, London, 1986, pl. 43, and also published in Wang Shixiang, Connoisseurship of Chinese Furniture: Ming and Early Qing Dynasties, Hong Kong, 1989, vol. I, p. 40, vol. II, p. 42, A68.