Lot 38. A huanghuali medicine chest, yaoxiang, Ming dynasty, 17th century; 84.8 by 46 by h. 112.5 cm, 33 ⅜ by 18 ⅛ by h. 44 ¼ in. Estimate: 1,500,000 - 2,000,000 HKD. Lot sold 5,257,000 HKD. Courtesy Sotheby's.

the rectangular chest of miter, mortise, tenon, tongue-and-grooved flush floating-panel construction, the hinged doors composed of floating panels set within rectangular frames, the sides and top similarly constructed, the interior with fourteen drawers divided into four rows, above a cusped apron carved with intertwining scrolling tendrils and plain spandrelled side aprons.

Provenance : Christie's New York, 3rd December 1994, lot 258.

Note: The panelled doors of this cabinet open to reveal fourteen small drawers of different sizes. Square-corner cabinets with multiple drawers are generally described as apothecary cabinets and used for storing herbs and medicines, but could have been used to store and sort a variety of objects, from documents to writing materials, accessories and treasured objects. The Ming dynasty intellectual and theorist on interior design Li Yu (1611-1680?), in his Xian qing ou ji [Random notes on times of leisure] from 1671, discusses the usefulness of drawers and describes a multi-drawer cabinet designed for scholars after pharmacists’ ‘hundred-eye cabinet’ (bai yan chu).

Apothecary cabinets are unusual and extant examples are more commonly known of smaller size; compare a smaller cabinet lacking the doors, from the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, New York, sold in our New York rooms, 19th/20th March 2007, lot 303; and a much smaller one illustrated in Wang Shixiang, Connoisseurship of Chinese Furniture Ming and Early Qing Dynasties, Hong Kong, 1990, vol. II, pl. E21. See also an apothecary chest, from the collection Robert Hatfield Ellsworth, sold in our New York rooms, 30th March 2006, lot 118; and another from the Jingguantang collection, sold twice at Christie’s New York, 20th March 1997, lot 8, and 21st September 2004, lot 15.

Apothecary cabinets are mentioned in the Lu Ban jing [Classics of Lu Ban], the 15th century carpenter’s manual named after the mythical patron of the carpenter’s craft. Here a cabinet with twenty-four drawers arranged in tiers of seven is described and named as yao chu.