Antique Miniature Home Altar With Guanyin Panel, China (19433BCK) $485

Description

Chinese artisans devoted as much time and effort to create small accessories like home altar tables as they do with larger pieces. This home altar table is handcrafted with mortise-and-tenon joints, using no nails or glue which made it more stable and longer lasting. The surface blend multiple layers of different colors  of blacks and reds interspersed by coats of lacquer, all hand applied and rubbed to create a  a rich soft reddish patina. Like nost antique Chinese decorative furnishings and accessories this contains symbolic auspicious designs reflecting a wish for fu and the Five Blessings or Happinesses – wealth, health, longevity, love of virtue and a peaceful death. This table might have been a wedding gift for the newly weds with symbols to have many children. Rats symbolize fertility, wealth, and abundance and are often portrayed, as here, with melons that mean “fertility in abundance.”  White Robed Guanyin here is on a hǒu symbolizing righteousness, morality, and the mandate of heaven to usher in peace and prosperity. As a syncretic deity Guanyin holds a  lotus she holds, a symbol of purity in Buddhism, Taoism and Popular Folk Religions.  The hǒu resembles a Buddhist lion with its roaring mouth open symbolizing Guanyin’s power over the forces of nature. They are also revered mythical animals who gather and guard money for their masters and defend them from bad fortune. The drawers and  doors have metal teardrop pulls on radiating scalloped discs. The doors and scrolled apron have finely carved, painted, gilded, and lacquer with rounded borders with more auspicious symbols.