Tortoise-shell Closet

This is a kind of storage furniture with each story compartmented unlike an ordinary chest. It was mostly used for storing clothes. As indicated in the Chinese character “籠 (nong)” in its name, it appears to have developed from a box originally woven out of bamboo or wicker. Since boxes with lids are difficult to open when piled up on top of each other, this chest has been developed to have a hinged door on the front, and designed to be stacked in number or used separately. This led to the production of single-tiered and multi-tiered chests. Iron handles are often attached to both sides or the front. In general, this type of furniture is placed in the main room, which was often occupied by women, and is smaller than an ordinary chest with two- or three-story compartments usually. The surface of the clothes chest is decorated with the natural wood grain or inlaid with luxurious mother-of-pearl or tortoiseshell. The furniture shown here is a two-story clothes chest decorated with tortoiseshell and mother-of-pearl. The feet are tightly attached to the first-story chest and the hinged door is large enough to occupy most of the front side. A clothes chest was shaped using a 15mm-thick board, with the surface except for the backside decorated with tortoiseshell, mother-of-pearl and copper threads and then varnished with lacquer. Decorative patterns included dragons in tortoiseshell and clouds in mother-of-pearl, while the feet were decorated with the pattern of seven treasures using tortoiseshell and mother-of-pearl. On the front side, the butterfly-shaped brass ornaments inlaid with a flora pattern, tail-of-swallow-shaped hinges and metal corner decorations added a sense of luxury to this clothes chest using brass feldspar cut from a brass plate. The edges of the door were lined with rectangular wooden rims to prevent the door from being pushed inside.