Plate with long-tailed bird in a garden

Cinnabar, a red crystalline form of mercuric sulfide found in many parts of China, was one of the pigments most frequently used to color the lacquers made at the Mingdynasty court workshops. There are many reasons for the popularity of cinnabar: for one, the Chinese term for this shade of red is zhu, which is the same character as the surname of the ruling family of the Ming dynasty. Red was also the dynastic color for the Ming and a color that represents happiness and good fortune to the Chinese.

A sophisticated understanding of the medium was required before carved lacquers could be created. In order to undergo the chemical change required for curing, lacquer must be applied in thin coats. The thick coverings necessary for carving are achieved by applying multiple coats. The most complex carved lacquers might have a thin wood core reinforced with a layer of lacquer-impregnated cloth; base coats created by adding combinations of ash, rice paste, wood powder, or fine clay to lacquer; and multiple finish coats of refined lacquer. Each coat has special qualities of sealing, filling, leveling, and finishing, and must be applied in the proper conditions and in proper sequence. Since each coat must be cured and mechanically smoothed before another is added, the thickest applications can require as much as a year from the initial coat to the final finish. (The complexity of these applications are well described in Ohba 1988.) These technical challenges had been overcome by the Song dynasty, making possible the elaborately carved works for which the Ming is famous.

This piece presents a long-tailed bird in a garden bordered by flowers of the four seasons. The theme of birds in a garden setting or with a floral background can be traced back to themes for painting at the Southern Song court. The early Ming emperors harked back to this earlier Chinese dynasty and the arts created there to give legitimacy to their own rule.