Lot 131. A huanghuali folding stool, Late Ming dynasty; 46.5 by 51 by 48.7 cm., 18 1/4  by 20 by 19 1/8  in. Estimate 900,000 — 1,800,000 HKD. Lot Sold 2,120,000 HKD (243,707 EUR). Courtesy Sotheby's.

well proportioned and constructed with curvilinear shaped seat rails with beaded edges drilled for a woven seat (now restored with woven ropes), the round legs mortised, tennoned and lapped to the seat rails and base stretchers, all with exposed tenons, hinged by metal rods passing through holes in their centre and secured on both sides by chrysanthemum-shaped baitong plates, reinforced by inlaid rectangular plates with ruyi heads, a shaped footrest with small hoof feet and a cusped apron mortised and tennoned to the pair of front legs and base stretcher, baitong straps with ruyi heads added for reinforcements on where the four legs, base stretcher and leg-seat rail join.

Exhibited: In Pursuit of Antiquities: Thirty-fifth Anniversary Exhibition of the Min Chiu Society, Hong Kong Museum of Art, Hong Kong, 1995-96, cat. no. 234, p. 262.
Denver Art Museum, Denver, Colorado, 1997-99.
Grace Wu Bruce, Chan Chair and Qin Bench: The Dr. S. Y. Yip Collection of Classic Chinese Furniture II, Art Museum, Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, 1998, cat. no. 9, pp. 76-77.
Grace Wu Bruce presents Ming Furniture from the Collection of Dr. S. Y. Yip, Institute of Contemporary Art, London, 1999.

Note: "Folding stools elicits imagined hunting trips or that of a general having a brief rest at war. The baitong plates are such an enhancement to its beauty."

The design of this folding stool has ancient origins. From as early as the Han dynasty, the name huchuang has been used to refer to stools of this design. Easily folded for carriage or storage, folding stools were widely used from ancient times to now.

This refined Ming piece made in precious huanghuali wood has baitong metal mounts. The woodblock print illustration to Lienu Zhuan (Biography of women in Ancient China) by Ming dynasty painter Qiu Ying shows an attendant carrying a folding stool behind his master on horseback, suggesting their usage as travelling seats as well as stools for alighting from horses.

For a similar example, now on display in the Shanghai Museum, see Wang Shixiang, Connoisseurship of Chinese Furniture: Ming and Early Qing Dynasties, vol. II, Hong Kong, 1990, pl. A41. Another related example with carved tendrils is illustrated in Nancy Berliner, Beyond the Screen: Chinese Furniture of the 16th and 17th Centuries, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, 1996. See also Robert D. Jacobsen and Nicholas Grindley, Classical Chinese Furniture in the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, Minneapolis, 1999, pp. 36-37 for a carved example.

Sotheby's. Ming Furniture – The Dr S Y Yip Collection, Hong Kong, 07 October 2015