Beyond The Screen

During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Chinese furniture reached a pinnacle of fine design and workmanship. Beyond the Screen: Chinese Furniture of the 16th and 17th Centuries leads the reader on a journey that encompasses not only the evolution of this exquisite furniture design but also the many literary, architectural, and visual contexts in which it appeared. Accompanying the catalogue, Ming woodblock prints and excerpts from Ming literature portray and describe furniture as it was used in daily life. Catalogue entries explain both customary and less-usual functions for the furnishings. The space under beds, for instance, was occasionally used by lovers to hide from jealous husbands, and in prints chairs are seen being tossed from windows during brawls. Four essays by scholars in the field explore the furniture and the members of late-Ming society, from the carpenters to the patrons responsible for its magnificence. In "Furnishing the Self in Early Modern China", Craig Clunas describes the status of furniture within the prosperous households that patronized the finest furniture makers. Sarah Handler details the changing designs and styles of furniture types in her essay "Wood Shaped and Standing Through the Winds of Time: The Evolution of Chinese Furniture". The carpenters and their skills are the focus of "The Furniture Maker and the Woodworking Traditions of China", by Curtis Evarts. And Wang Zhengshu, in "Conjectures on Models of Ming-Period Furniture Excavated from the Pan Yunzheng Tomb in Shanghai", investigates a remarkable set of miniature wooden furniture found in the 1589 tomb of a Ming official.