Pair of lamp stands Huanghuali wood Late Ming to early Qing (1600 – 1700)

The two uprights of the stand are joined by hump-back-shaped stretchers at the top with openings in the centre to accommodate the post of the lamp receptacle. These uprights are mortised and tenoned into the shaped, solid base shoe-type feet, decorated with carving of scrolling tendrils. On either side, tall spandrels carved with cloud patterns and what appears to be the sun are mortised and tenoned to the solid feet and the upright member. Two straight stretchers inset with an openwork carved scrolling cloud panel are at the base. Below the bottom stretcher, a shaped apron, carved with stylized tendrils, is tongue-and-grooved at 45 degrees to it and the solid feet, one on each side. The circular lamp receptacle is supported by four spandrels underneath, carved in the form of stylised dragons and mortised and tenoned into the post and the base of the circular lamp receptacle. The post is socketed into a horizontal stretcher underneath and on the underside, is fitted with two sliding metal bolts that lock into holes drilled at intervals on the insides of the uprights to determine the desired height at which the lamp post should be fixed.

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”
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”

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. 142 – 143
Grace Wu Bruce, Grace Wu Bruce presents a choice selection of Ming Furniture from the Dr. S. Y. Yip collections, Hong Kong, 2012, pp. 26 – 27
Grace Wu Bruce, Ming Furniture Through My Eyes, The Forbidden City Publishing House, Beijing, 2015, p. 265

Similar examples:
Wang Shixiang and Curtis Evarts, Masterpieces from the Museum of Classical Chinese Furniture, Chicago and San Francisco, 1995 illustrates a similar pair but with chi dragons motif, now in the collection of the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, Robert D. Jacobsen and Nicholas Grindley, Classical Chinese Furniture in the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, Minneapolis, 1999, pp. 168 – 169
Robert Hatfield Ellsworth, Chinese Furniture: Hardwood Examples of the Ming and Early Ching Dynasties, Random House, New York, 1971, p. 227, plate 142 for another pair in the author’s collection, auctioned at Christie’s New York in March 2015, Christie’s, The Collection of Robert Hatfield Ellsworth Part II - Chinese Furniture, Scholar’s Objects and Chinese Paintings, New York, 18 March 2015, no. 104

The Ming novel Jin Ping Mei, The Golden Lotus illustrates a very similar lamp stand. Lamp stands were mostly made in pairs but over time became separated, so while there are single pieces in surviving examples, pairs are very very rare with only less than a handful of published examples known.
The present example is richly decorated with dragon spandrels at the lamp base and elaborately carved scrolling clouds and tendrils at the base panels, spandrels, aprons, and the solid feet.
The central post is extendable. Metal sliding bolts are installed in the cross stretcher. These would fit into sockets at different levels of the uprights of the stand to hold the post at the desired height. This mechanism is an improvement from the usual control method of a stop-gap wedge at the top of the stand in the opening where the post passes through.