Description
Carved along the natural form and contours of the original agarwood material, using both high relief and low relief techniques to depict houses among layers of mountain rocks and lush forests, this set of brush holders comprises two works, and were used for display. Agarwood material is difficult to procure, and to have sufficient material and skills to produce a matched set of works attests to the opulence of court furnishings at the time. Similar works can be found in the collection of the Palace Museum at Beijing. According to the "Palace Items Auditing Report," this pair of works were originally displayed in the Jingshifang (Office of Eunuch Affairs), and may have been the "Pair of agarwood brush holders inlaid with bronze" described in the "Record of Actual Remaining Small Lacquer Wood Vessels of the Jingshifang in the Fourteenth Year of the Xuantong Reign."