Lute table, Huanghuali wood Late Ming (1573 – 1644)

A huanghuali lute table, the top of standard mitre, mortise, and tenon construction, with a flush, two-board floating panel tongue-and-grooved into the mitred frame, and there are exposed tenons on the short members. There are three dovetailed transverse braces underneath. The frame moulds downward from about half way down and ends in a beaded edge. The beaded-edged apron with cloud motif spandrels is butt-joined to the underside of the table and tongue-and-grooved to the legs. The legs, round on the outside and square on the inside, beaded where they meet, are double tenoned to the top. There are four square-section S-shaped braces, mortised, and tenoned into the legs and half-lapped, wood-pinned onto the transverse brace on either end of the table for further support. This table retains its original lacquer undercoating.

Hong Kong, 1990 – 1991, Hong Kong Museum of Art, “Selected Treasures of Chinese Art: Min Chiu Society Thirtieth Anniversary Exhibition”
Hong Kong, 1991, Art Gallery, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, “The Dr. S. Y. Yip Collection of Classic Chinese Furniture”
Singapore, 1997 – 1999, Asian Civilisations Museum, “The Chinese Collection”
Berlin, 2000 – 2002, Museum Für Ostasiatische Kunst, Berlin
Hong Kong, 2012, Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre, “Grace Wu Bruce presents a choice selection of Ming Furniture from the Dr. S. Y. Yip collections”

Min Chiu Society, Selected Treasures of Chinese Art: Min Chiu Society Thirtieth Anniversary Exhibition, Hong Kong, 1990, pp. 506 – 507
Grace Wu Bruce, Dreams of Chu Tan Chamber and the Romance with Huanghuali Wood: The Dr. S. Y. Yip Collection of Classic Chinese Furniture, Hong Kong, 1991, pp. 62 – 63
Yip Shing Yiu, ‘Collecting Ming Furniture of Huang Hua-Li Wood’, Arts of Asia, May – June 1991, Hong Kong, p. 121
Grace Wu Bruce presents a choice selection of Ming Furniture from the Dr. S. Y. Yip collections, Hong Kong, 2012, pp. 32 – 33

Lute tables are recorded in both the Wanli (1573 – 1620) edition of Lu Ban jing jiang jia jing (The Classic of Lu Ban and the Craftsman’s Mirror) and Gegu yaolun (The Essential Criteria for Antiquities) of 1388 as a type of table of a certain size intended for playing the lute on. But it is not certain whether if these tables were used exclusively for this purpose.
This table of special design has an apron with attractive cloud motif spandrels and curved S-shaped braces. The latter is a unique feature in Chinese furniture of this period.