AN EXTREMELY RARE HUANGHUALI FOUR-POSTER CANOPY BED, JIAZICHUANG MING DYNASTY, 16TH / 17TH CENTURY

the wide rectangular frame with a soft mat sleeping surface, above a constricted cusped apron extending onto slightly tapered legs with undulating flanges, four of the square corner posts joined on three sides with a structured latticework railing pingzi pattern, the posts further joined at the top by a galleried canopy of conforming form above a frieze pierced with openings and detailed with raised vertical struts

Christie's New York, 16th September 1998, lot 81.
A private Asian collection.

Intact canopy beds are extremely rare, and virtually none retain their original paneled tops. Latticework beds of the six-post type in published collections include two formerly in the collection of the Museum of Classic Chinese Furniture, Renaissance, California and later sold at Christie's New York, 19th September 1996, lots 62 and lot 84; and another in Robert H. Ellsworth, Chinese Furniture from the Mimi and Raymond Hung Collection, Hong Kong, 2005, no. 48. A six-post canopy bed in the collection of the Minneapolis Institute of Arts is in Robert D. Jacobsen and Nicholas Grindley, Chinese Classical Furniture in the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, 1999, no. 24.

For further discussion on the evolution and decoration of canopy beds see Sarah Handler, Ming Furniture in the Light of Chinese Architecture, Berkeley, California, 2005, chapter 4, pp. 67-105. In addition refer to Jonathan Hay, Sensuous Surfaces, The Decorative Object in Early Modern China, London, 2010, pp. 289-295 in which the author describes the social context and sumptuous setting to which these elaborate forms belong. See also Wang Shixiang's illustration of a drawing of a four-poster bed with an open front and pingzi-pattern side rail in Connoisseurship of Chinese Furniture, 1990, vol. II, Hong Kong, p. 134, no. C15.