Cabinet, One of Pair

Chinese domestic furniture designed for the private quarters of an upper-class home is often characterized by the elegant simplicity of its design and the beauty that comes from the natural woods. These two massive Cabinets for clothing and household goods have interior shelves and are surmounted by so-called hat cupboards. They are constructed principally of Chinese camphorwood, a fragrant wood that helped repel insects. The mortise and tenon joinery-typically fine Chinese furniture is assembled without the use of nails is visible at the corners where the ends of the through-tenons appear on the sides of the cabinets. The austere form of the cabinets is set off by a band of low-relief design carved along the bottom aprons of the Cabinets.