A very rare huanghuali apothecary chest 17th / 18th Century

with floating-panels at the top and sides set within a simple rectangular frame of squared members with plain aprons on the three main sides, the slightly set-back interior composed of a regular array of thirty square-front drawers in six rows by five tiers, each drawer divided into four square compartments, all between two full-length rectangular drawers, each divided into a wide bay of twenty-four compartments, the interior dividers constructed of hongmu, with the interesting feature of the identifying inscriptions or medicine labels for their contents written in ink at the right side of each drawer, with 'fish-tail' metal pulls on each drawer

Medicine cabinets with mostly uniform-sized drawers and without any doors are rare.  Cabinets such as the present example made of huanghuali wood were costly pieces and, in addition to being extremely useful for storing all kinds of objects, were valued as pieces of furniture as well.  Compare a similar chest with eighteen drawers enclosed by two doors, illustrated in Wang Shixiang, Connoisseurship of Chinese Furniture: Ming and Early Qing Dynasties, Hong Kong, 1990, no. E22; another in Wang Shixiang, Classical Chinese Furniture, Ming and Qing Dynasties, Hong Kong, 1986, no. 159; and one of related form and size illustrated in Robert Jacobsen, Classical Chinese Furniture in the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, 1999, no. 70. 

See also a slightly larger example with twenty-eight drawers from the Jingguantang Collection, sold at Christie's New York, 20th March 1997, lot 8 and again on 21st September 2004, lot 15; and one from the Robert Hatfield Ellsworth Collection, sold in these rooms, 30th March 2006, lot 118.