Antique Home Altar With Panel of Guanyin on Hǒu, China #19433

Description

Chinese artisans created small furniture with as much care as e altar tables as they did larger pieces. This home altar table is handcrafted with mortise-and-tenon joints for stability with no nails or glue. The surface of blended layers of blacks and reds interspersed by coats of lacquer was hand applied and rubbed to a soft patina. The carved White Robed Guanyin holds a lotus symbolizing purity. She sits on a hǒu, a mythical beast that represents righteousness, morality, peace and prosperity and gathers money and protects its masters. Its roaring open mouth resembles a Buddhist lion reflecting Guanyin’s power over natural forces. Other auspicious designs reflect a wish for fu: wealth, health, longevity, love of virtue and a peaceful death. It might have been a wedding gift as it has depictions of rats symbolizing wealth and abundance and with melons mean “fertility in abundance.” The drawers and doors have metal teardrop door pulls with radiating scalloped discs and the scrolled apron have finely carved, painted, gilded, and lacquer with rounded borders with more auspicious symbols.