A HUANGHUALI MEDICINE CHEST, YAOXIANG MING DYNASTY, 17TH CENTURY | 明十七世紀 黃花梨十四屜藥箱

Christie's New York, 3rd December 1994, lot 258.

紐約佳士得1994年12月3日，編號258

The panelled doors of this cabinet open to reveal fourteen small drawers of different sizes. Square-corner cabinets with multiple drawers are generally described as apothecary cabinets and used for storing herbs and medicines, but could have been used to store and sort a variety of objects, from documents to writing materials, accessories and treasured objects. The Ming dynasty intellectual and theorist on interior design Li Yu (1611-1680?), in his Xian qing ou ji [Random notes on times of leisure] from 1671, discusses the usefulness of drawers and describes a multi-drawer cabinet designed for scholars after pharmacists’ ‘hundred-eye cabinet’ (bai yan chu).

Apothecary cabinets are unusual and extant examples are more commonly known of smaller size; compare a smaller cabinet lacking the doors, from the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, New York, sold in our New York rooms, 19th/20th March 2007, lot 303; and a much smaller one illustrated in Wang Shixiang, Connoisseurship of Chinese Furniture Ming and Early Qing Dynasties, Hong Kong, 1990, vol. II, pl. E21. See also an apothecary chest, from the collection Robert Hatfield Ellsworth, sold in our New York rooms, 30th March 2006, lot 118; and another from the Jingguantang collection, sold twice at Christie’s New York, 20th March 1997, lot 8, and 21st September 2004, lot 15.

Apothecary cabinets are mentioned in the Lu Ban jing [Classics of Lu Ban], the 15th century carpenter’s manual named after the mythical patron of the carpenter’s craft. Here a cabinet with twenty-four drawers arranged in tiers of seven is described and named as yao chu.

雙開門內設十四屜，大小不一。方角多屜櫃通稱藥箱，用於存放藥材，亦可收納文書、筆墨，乃至首飾、珍玩等。明末清初文士李漁（1611-1680年）著《閒情偶寄》，康熙十年（1671年）初刊，論及抽屜之功用，名此類多屜櫃曰「百眼櫥」。

藥箱乃不多見，存世諸例多尺寸較小，比如一例，無門，紐約州水牛城奧爾布賴特．諾克斯美術館舊藏，售於紐約蘇富比2007年3月19/20日，編號303；再比一例，尺寸更小，錄於王世襄，《明式家具研究》，香港，1990年，卷II，圖版E21。另一藥箱，安思遠舊藏，售於紐約蘇富比2006年3月30日，編號118；及一藥箱，靜觀堂舊藏，兩度售於紐約佳士得，1997年3月20日，編號8，及2004年9月21日，編號15。

十五世紀匠心集腋成裘，巧匠尊木工鼻祖魯班之名撰《魯班經》，書中載有一藥箱，分七層二十四屜，曰藥櫥。