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Recently I had the chance to see
one of the best executed examples of hand-cut dovetails I have
ever encountered. It was in a side-area of the flower room
of the Meixi village museum. Meixi was a small village in
the Pearl river delta, today it is a suburb of Zhuhai,
essentially the Northern continuation of the city of Macao. I found the dovetails in two chests in a dimly lit room, one standing on the floor, the other on top a cabinet. In fact it is almost impossible to see any joinery on these two chests. Luckily I had my macro lens with me and was able and with the usual digital enhancement the dovetail joint becomes visible. Chinese literati had a distinct preference for wired gnarly wood, huang hauli mu (literally yellow flowery pear wood) or zitan (red sandal wood NOT a relative to the ordinary sandal wood), the harder the better, the denser the better and one might tend to think the more difficult to work the better. But since huang hua li and certainly zitan do not come in large boards, the chests might be made of Hawaiian Koa. In general it is extremely difficult to date Chinese furniture. The chests were minor pieces of the general exhibition (more on the rest of the exhibition in a later article) and were unlabeled. The owner of the residence, Chen Guofen (aka. Chung Fong, in the West usually know as Chung Afong) was a wealthy businessman and politician, lived in the village in the 1890’s and my guess is the chests should nails or pegs and none of the joinery has ever seen a drop of glue. Close-ups reveal the exquisite craftsmanship of the chests.
At various times in history, Western and Chinese furniture style had strongly influenced each other. The Honolulu Academy of Arts displays exquisite examples of chinoise style furniture as well as Chinese interpretations of Western furniture. It is conceivable that Mr. Chen commissioned some of the best Chinese cabinet makers to build these chests, combining Chinese precision and skill with Western design. Since most Chinese furniture is build using frame and panel type designs, dovetail joints play a minor role in Chinese furniture construction and traditionally trained Chinese woodworkers would consider dovetail joints to be one of the easy types of joints. The chests might have been used to store his personal belongings during his frequent travels (in fact he was owned a vessel, the China Packet that sailed back and for the between Honolulu and Hong Kong). The exquisite execution of the dovetails certainly gives clues on the importance of the documents and good stored in these chests.
Is THIS the perfect hand-cut dovetails? Probably as good as a hand-cut dovetails will ever get. July, 2007
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