Antique Ancestor Official Ornate Robes, China (5686)

Description

This fine Chinese wood carving is a seated ancestor figure portrayed as a Chinese official. By the 10th century, the Chinese  bureaucracy was run by a class of scholarly elite officials who passed a variety of tough examinations in history, philosophy and the Confucian teachings of statecraft and ethics. Passing made them eligible for positions from local magistrate to the highest state ministers (Blofeld, p. xv) giving them and their families status, power and financial stability for life. Families honored their ancestors in paintings and carvings reflecting both their wealth and  filial piety. This statue reveals both.

The man’s forceful face with inset glass pupils, high cheekbones, projecting chin, forehead wrinkles indicating his wisdom of age and the holes that held hair for his moustache and beard commands great respect. His official attire is meant to impress from his hat to his extravagant robes to his boots. The first layer is a barely visible around his neck. The middle yellow-gold layer is decorated with a wide red trim (the color of fu or blessings) and a bead shaped border enclosing beautifully lacquered floral sprays in relief. The outer robe bordered with spirals. The robe has elegant folds and cranes  on the shoulders and knees symbol of longevity, wisdom, and good fortune and Daoist ideals of immortality and harmony with nature. In this carving it is a reinforcement of his high status, grace, and loyalty. Stylized clouds (yun) are scattered which are a homophone for good fortune and, as they are high in the sky, they symbolize high rank. Covered with a smokey black coating from incense and candle offerings, they compound the natural darkening of Chinese lacquer over time. The rear cavity indicates it was consecrated. A form of ancestor worship, it could have been on a home altar but given its size and beauty, it may have been in a special family or clan shrine. The front is in very good condition with expected surface losses; the back has age and some old stabilized insect deterioration. This special piece set on a modern frosted Lucite stand isone of our most important ancestor figures. 

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Sources

Terese Tse Bartholomew, Hidden Meanings in Chinese Art, San Francisco, Asian Art Museum of San Francisco, 2006.      

Patricia Bjaaland Welch, Chinese Art: A Guide to Motifs and Visual Imagery, North Clarendon, Tuttle Publishing, 2008.