Furniture - Chinese and Japanese

The wood most frequently employed for fine quality work in China is called hua-li, and it seems to have been a kind of rosewood [species Dalabergia]. The quality furniture making within their own borders, and consequently most of their timber for this purpose was imported from the south. The woods, on the whole, were not those imported into Europe for similar purposes, and it is difficult to make exact identifications from manufactured and polished specimens when only the Chinese terms are known, since equivalents in European languages have never been fixed. Blackwood, which is not black naturally but very dark in colour, is a rosewood, the East Indian Dalbergia Latifolia. It is sometimes called tzú t'an mu, but the same term is sometimes employed to describe any fine-grained, heavy, hardwood of the kind used for furniture making. Padouk wood, also imported into England and used by Chippendale, came from the Andaman Islands, and is more easily identified. It has dark chocolate-brown markings and a purplish or crimson background, and the Chinese used it in the eighteenth century to make furniture for export to the West. Damphorwood, which repels such insects as the clothes moth, was used to make chests in which furs and clothes were stored, and the bamboo was employed to make light summer furniture for garden use. Furniture of woven rattan cane was also made but has not survived. It is known from prints. Nearly all Japanese furniture is lacquered, and polished wood is exceptional, so the identification of the various woods employed is not only difficult but usually of no particular interest.

Very little is known about Chinese furniture made before the Ming dynasty [1368-1644], although paintings of earlier dates than this, and literary references, suggest that Ming designs were a continuation of a slow process of evolution. There are also one or two specimens of Chinese furniture in the eight century closed collection of the Shos÷in Pavilion at Nara [Japan] which belonged originally to the Emperor Shomu.

The chair was introduced towards the end of the Han dynasty [106 B.C.-A.D. 22 0] as a seat of honour or throne, and it was almost certainly Buddhist in origin. It arrived in Japan during the Nara period [710-94] and was employed for the same purpose, afterwards becoming the prerogative of Buddhist priests, but, unlike China, it did not come into general domestic use till modern times.

The chair is perhaps the commonest survival in China from early Ming times, and a number of specimens are known dating back to the reign of the Emperor HsÄan-te [1426-35]. Early examples have a box frame and back and arm rails formed in a continuous curve as far as the seat, the center of the back supported by a solid curved splat. The wood was usually huang hua-li [rosewood]. The design, with the lower part replaced by four legs of the modern type [i.e. without the box frame] has been closely followed in some modern Japanese chairs. Another early type has a box frame and a straight back, and these, when the back is higher than customary, are reminiscent of a design by Rennie Mackintosh.

Chairs with arms were far outnumbered by chairs without arms and the backless stool, both of which are rarely seen in the West. The armchair was intended for the head of the household and his honoured guests. Persons of lower rank occupied armless chairs, and paintings usually show women seated on stools - a system of etiquette in seating apparently as rigid as that of Louis XIV at Versailles. Porcelain or stoneware barrel-shaped seats were sometimes used indoors; more often in the garden.

The Chinese valued comfort, and the chairs of important people were covered with furs and decorative textiles - the greater their importance, the more ample the covering. There was also an easy chair with an adjustable reclining back and an extension to support the legs which was known as 'the drunken lord's chair'.

Although tables were made in great variety the principal kinds divide readily into two classes - side tables, narrow, rectangular, and massive, and made in pairs to be placed against the walls, and dining tables, brought into the room when the meal was ready to be served and therefore light in weight. Dining tables were round or square. In restaurants catering more or less exclusively for a Chinese clientele it is not uncommon to see a circular table on a low dais at one end of the room. This is the place of honour for important parties. The table is of a size sufficient to allow diners to reach out with chopsticks and serve themselves from dishes placed in the centre of the table. For this reason, for a very large party the Chinese usually arrange a number of small square tables separately instead of putting them together.

Tables for special purposes, such as altar tables used in the ancestral hall to venerate the spirits of the dead, lute tables made to carry the Chinese zither, gaming tables with recesses for counters, and small low tables usually intended as Kang tables, were all numerous. Desks often resembled the European pedestal writing desk, with drawers on ether side. Writing tables were large and flat, and since panting and calligraphy were closely allied arts, they were employed for painting as well. The implements for the writing table, employed alike for writing and painting, are a brush pot, inks stone, water dropper, brush rest, wrist rest, paperweights, and a table screen, all of which are often of porcelain or jade. Table screens of jade, porcelain, or lacquer are slotted into a heavy carved word base, and there are instances of these stands having been converted to hold a small swing toilet mirror in the European manner. A much enlarged version of the table screen about 5 feet [1.5 m] high was sometimes employed decoratively in the Chinese interior. The base supported a painting on silk in an ornate carved or inlaid frame.

Storage cupboards were made in great variety, the doors with exterior hinges and large engraved lockplates of paktong or pewter. The Chinese preferred closed cupboards to open shelves, unlike the Japanese who used open shelving almost exclusively. When the Chinese used shelving it differed considerably from that of Japan because, even when the shelves were slit level, they were always symmetrically disposed, whereas the Japanese disposition is almost invariably asymmetrical. This peculiarity is to be observed throughout the whole of the interior decoration of the two peoples. The Chinese made wardrobes and side tables in pairs; vases were made [p. 147]