Provenance: From an important private American collection of classical Chinese furniture, sold at Sotheby's New York, 19 March 2007, lot 320.

Note: The present pair of tapered stile cabinets are rare to find, especially with such densely figured burlwood panels. Large flat panels of burl are relatively rare since the complex knots and whorls in the burl would react at different rates to humidity, leaving most case furniture with cracked or buckled burl-sections or panels. But on these particular cabinets, the quality of the burl panels is unusually fine.The tapering or 'A-line' structure demonstrates the complex craftsmanship involved, using the outward splay of the posts to enable the wood-hinged doors to automatically swing closed if left opened. This also necessitated careful allowance at the panels of the doors since the door-panels are actually trapezoidal, not strictly rectangular, and in fact slightly wider at the bottoms than the tops.