The rectangular top panel colourfully decorated with a landscape scene as well as with two smaller scenes depicting various plants and flowers, all reserved on a floral diaper on red ground, the table sides and the square-section legs all decorated with designs of leafy scrolling lotus blooms, the openwork apron with blossoming flowers within meandering scrolling tendrils, the legs terminating in hoof feet. Height 77 cm, length 125 cm, depth 42 cm.
Wear, damages.
Purchased at Bukowskis, sale 621, 733. Then from a private Swedish Estate.
The technique tianqi involves the building up of layers of lacquer over wood covered in hemp cloth. Each layer is left to dry and then polished down; once thick enough the design is incised on the surface and these areas are outlined with gilt and filled in with lacquers of various colours including tones of red ochre, green, black and brown.