A pair of black lacquer chopsticks, Northern Song Dynasty. Photo Sotheby's

the long slender sticks delicately carved with a ribbed section at the grip and a tapered conical tip, the lustrous lacquer of deep brownish black colour; 28.5 cm., 11 1/4 in. Estimation 30,000 — 40,000 HKD

Exposition: 2000 Years of Chinese Lacquer. Oriental Ceramic Society of Hong Kong and the Art Gallery, the Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, 1993, cat. no. 13.
Layered Beauty: The Baoyizhai Collection of Chinese Lacquer, Art Museum, Institute of Chinese Studies, the Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, 2010, cat. no. 8.

The graceful, elongated form of this pair of chopsticks is a Tang tradition that continued through to the Northern Song dynasty. The twelve-ringed design is skilfully evocative of bamboo nodes.

A pair of lacquer chopsticks, attributed to the Southern Song period, were included in the exhibition So Gen no bi/ The Colors and Forms of Song and Yuan China, Nezu Institute of Fine Arts, Tokyo, 2004, cat. no. 42, together with a pair of bronze chopsticks. For a pair of chopsticks of similar form, also modelled and lacquered with bamboo node design, excavated from the tomb of Zhang Shiben of the Liao dynasty, in Xuanhua, Hebei, see Chen Jing (ed.), Zhongguo Qiqi Quanji. San Guo - Yuan, Fuzhou, 1998, pl. no. 112.

Sotheby's. The Baoyizhai Collection of Chinese Lacquer, Part 1, Hong Kong | 08 avr. 2014 - www.sothebys.com