17TH CENTURY

Chinese domestic spaces did not include closets, as such storage chests, cabinets, and clothes racks served to store and hold clothing and garments. Heating in traditional Chinese homes was localized, in the form of braziers. Garments were worn or removed in accordance with the changing temperatures. Clothing racks served as temporary storage solutions. Ming-dynasty woodblock prints show clothing racks with garments draped over the top rail and almost always near a bed or in a bedroom. The connecting base stretchers would store shoes or boots.

There are a few surviving examples in huanghuali dating to the Ming period. Lightweight and constructed from thin members, clothes racks are fragile and easily damaged. The basic form is grid-like in design, horizontal members locking into vertical posts with tenons and base stretchers joining the humped, carved feet. The primary decorative element is seen in the openwork panels at the center and the terminals atop the posts. In the present exceptional clothes rack, the pierced panels are beautifully carved with pairs of chilong striking dynamic poses. Expressive and detailed dragon heads comprise the elegantly curved terminals. Chilong on the standing spandrels and the thick, humped feet complete the design motif.

The present clothes rack is most similar in design and proportions to one in the Palace Museum, Beijing, illustrated in The Complete Collection of Treasures of the Palace Museum - 53 - Furniture of the Ming and Qing Dynasties, Hong Kong, 2002, p. 253, no. 203. On both clothes racks, chilong serve as the primary decorative motif, seen in the pierced central panels, carved on the feet, and in the openwork standing spandrels. The Palace Museum example appears to be missing its base stretchers. Lingzhi fungus seem to have been another popular decorative motif seen on a huanghuali example currently in the Minneapolis Institute of Art, as illustrated by R. D. Jacobsen and N. Grindley, Classical Chinese Furniture in the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, Minneapolis, 1999, pp. 162-163, no. 56 and another example formerly in the Dr. S. Y. Yip Collection, Hong Kong and illustrated by Grace Wu Bruce in The Best of the Best: The MQJ Collection of Ming Furniture, Vol. 2, Hong Kong, 2017, pp. 412-16. A very rare huanghuali clothes rack in the Vok Collection, illustrated in N. Grindley and F. Hufnagel, Pure Form: Classical Chinese Furniture: Vok Collection, Munich, 2004, pl. 37, appears to be the only surviving example with a vertical posts extending from the base rail for the storage of boots.