Lot 3304. A large carved Songhua stone screen, Qing dynasty, 18th century; overall 87.cm by 119.5 by 27.5 cm., 34 1/2 by 47 cm., 10 7/8 in. Estimate 800,000 — 1,000,000 HKD. Lot Sold 1,220,000 HKD. Courtesy Sotheby's.

the rectangular stone panel deftly carved through several layers of stone revealing shades of tan, grey, green and red, depicting in low relief with a scholar and his attendant standing on the banks of a river beneath tall pine trees and other bare trees, the reverse incised with five poems carved in several styles of calligraphy, the characters picked-out in gilt, mounted in a wooden frame.

Note: Songhua stone belongs to the sedimentary rock family and is named after the Songhua River in Jilin province, which was the Manchu homeland in the northeast part of the Qing empire. Its smooth surface and natural brown and green colouration endowed the stone with many decorative possibilities. Moreover its association with the Manchu motherland made it particularly popular with the Qing rulers.

It is rare to find screens carved from Songhua stone, however inkstones and inkstone covers made from this material are known; see a rectangular cover carved with a scholar in a landscape included in A Special Exhibition of Sunghua Inkstone, National Palace Museum, Taipei, 1993, cat. no. 56. A panel carved with two travellers in a boat before cliffs and pavilions, with the medium catalogued as 'slate' was sold at Christie's London, 8th December 1986, lot 452..

Sotheby's. Fine Chinese Ceramics and Works of Art, Hong Kong, 08 april 2011