Coromandel Black Lacquer Screen - Four Panels - Period: Early 20th Century

Elegant screen painted in black lacquer known as coromandel. It is made up of four sides with a scene from imperial life on the front. We are in the playground of a school where the children have fun imitating their elders in their tasks of daily life, fishing, war, music and also taming the four elements, earth, fire, air and water. On the back we have a magnificent scene where cranes, emblematic birds which symbolize longevity, are placed near bamboos. Period: early 20th century dimensions: height: 183cm X width: 165cm X thickness: 2.8cm dimensions of a leaf: height: 183cm X width: 40.8cm X thickness: 2.8cm the type of so-called “coromandel” lacquers has was created in china around the middle of the 17th century. Their name, that of the eastern coast of india, was given by the english because it was in the ports of this coast that these lacquerwares were exported from china to europe. In the 17th and 18th centuries, chinese junks were transhipped onto the ships of the indian companies. These are cabinets and above all vast screens of twelve sheets which can reach 3 meters in height and 60 centimeters in width for each sheet. Originally, they were gifts offered in china to high dignitaries. Having become export items from the reign of kangxi, they enjoyed great popularity in europe. Many of them were dismembered upon their arrival and cut into panels to decorate chests of drawers. The technique inaugurates a new mode of decoration. The wood is covered with a fine fabric, held together with a coating of vegetable glue and pulverized shale, carefully flattened. The plain lacquer, almost always black, sometimes brown and more rarely red, is then applied in successive layers reaching approximately 3 millimeters thick. The decoration, surrounded by deep incisions and modeled in hollow, is then painted using matte colored pigments, green, red.