Miniature Bases

A scholar’s desk in the Qing years. A jade carving the size of a plum sits on its own small stand, and the stand was made just for it.

Miniature bases come from China, Nepal, Thailand and Belgium, in rosewood, huali, camphor wood, mahogany, ebony and brass. The Chinese fitted stands to small prized objects: jade, snuff bottles, bronzes, scholar’s rocks. The forms echo furniture, with kang-form tables on short cabriole legs, round, oval and square plinths, lotus pedestals and borders of Greek key, or leiwen, fret.

Most are nineteenth and twentieth century, the dark wood polished by hands. A base lifts a toggle off the shelf and gives it a stage.

A frame for a thing that has no wall.