Carved lacquer brush and cover, each made of multiple layers of alternating black, red and ochre lacquer, carved through in V-shaped grooves to create curvilinear designs of ruyi cloud heads or pommel scrolls and double circle motifs arranged in regular rows against a black ground.
Provenance:
Sydney L. Moss Ltd, London.
Private collection, acquired from the above in 2009.
Exhibited:
London, 2019, Eskenazi Limited.
Published:
Christie’s, New York, Fine Chinese Ceramics and Works of Art, 13 - 14 September 2018, number 1224.
Eskenazi Limited, Room for study: fifty scholars’ objects, London 2019, number 43.
Similar examples:
Gerard Tsang and Hugh Moss, Arts from the Scholar’s Studio, Oriental Ceramic Society of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, 1986, number 183, for a comparable tixi brush and cover of waisted form, dated to the sixteenth century; also, James C. Y. Watt et al., East Asian Lacquer, The Florence and Herbert Irving Collection, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1991, exhibition catalogue number 4, where the brush is dated to the thirteenth century.
Tokugawa Art Museum, Scholars Desk Materials from the Libraries of the Daimyo, Treasures from the Tokugawa Art Museum, (4), Nagoya, 1988, page 49, numbers 95 - 97, for three different types of tixi brushes dated to the Ming dynasty.
Kondou Yasushi, Bumbo seika, (Selected Objects from the Scholar’s Studio), Tokyo, 2007, numbers 3 and 4, for two tixi brushes and covers dated to the early Ming dynasty.
One of at least fourteen different lacquer decoration techniques used in China, tixi involved painting alternating layers of either black and red lacquer, or black, red and yellow to form a thick body. This was then carved away in deep V-shaped grooves to form curvilinear designs, particularly of cloud or pommel scrolls, revealing contour-like lines. The names used for this technique relate to the carved visual effects – tixi (carved rhinoceros [horn]) in Chinese or guri (twisted wheel) in Japanese and was particularly popular from the Song and Yuan dynasties to the early Ming. See Watt, op. cit., for a discussion of tixi brushes; the author suggests that the shape of the brush handle is important to the dating, with earlier versions having articulated handles and the Ming and later brushes having straight handles.