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i have just been reunited with three hardwood drawers from a table i bought in Ningbo about 12 years ago .
six or seven years ago i took the drawer fronts to Beijing for a friend to repair for me ...... me lost them !
anyway they just turned up , and now i have become interested in the table again .
The drawer fronts are , nanmu . i just had them checked by microscope , but i remain unsure as to the type of wood in the top surface .
Optimistically i like to think it is HHL , but on other occasions it strikes me as Hong Mu .
Has any one got a view in it they'd like to share ?

I'd guess it's rosewood. I can't comment on the age or quality since I have little experience with furniture. It appears to have some extensive water damage and other issues. I would contact a professional antique furniture restorer before doing anything to it if you plan to.

Second picture looks like a "ghost face" said to be chacteristic of HHL. The Gotheborg website has some interesting posts on the subject and some tests for HHL.

This wood appears to be a type of rosewood commonly found in late19th century early 2oth Chinese furniture. It has a very fine feathery grains between the darker annual rings. I suspect it is a genus of fair colored Zitan probably from india or Burma.

hi , i could not find anything on the Gotheborg site ,
could you point me in the right direction ?

In my opinion, this is definitely hongmu.

Hongmu was much more valued than it is sometimes thought and pieces made of zitan and hongmu are not rare.

This probably also comes from the fact Chinese craftsmen did not apply the same "scientific" observations that we today follow. Zitan seems to have been many different wood types, unless differing parts or qualities of wood were simpliy giving many huge variations.

Take note, some example of very nicely veined hongmu exist.

The general quality of a piece of Chinese furniture does not lie in the material, but mostly the craftsmanship, rarity and age.

Your piece seems to be dating of the 19th century and to be of a quite good manufacture. It is difficult to say if the overall patina is right, but the top part of it seems correct or very nicely immitated.

Phil

Phil,
I feel that although certain of these observations could be considered applicable in terms of a pragmatic understanding of the current market, I do not see that they necessarily represent a purist understanding of the academic discipline. The phrase 'pieces made of Zitan are not rare', cannot be said to be an academic nor an historic fact, unless of course you are referring to timbers of the botanic plant species Pterocarpus soyauxii / trade name African Zitan, in which case the correct traditional Chinese nomenclature of the species in fact Hongmu, and you are quite right in saying that pieces of furniture manufactured of this wood not particularly rare. Zitan proper, or Pterocarpus santalinus is without any question an extraordinarily rare botanic plant species, and pieces of furniture made of this wood are beyond any doubt among the most rare pieces of furniture in existence.
Truly,
Kirk

James,
I think yes Phil has a point, albeit he's way off on the 'zitan not rare' comment, there are a number of later used Pterocarpus & Dalbergia sp that have accentuated grain structure. I think it would be more pragmatic if you were to think of this piece in terms of age. Hongmu is a term that does not appear prior to the late 19thC. Strictly speaking it should not be applied to Asian variety Ptcps / Dlbga sp. Cutting of the Suez in the late 1860's sees movement of commercial timbers previously from the Coramandel coast to Europe around the Cape of Good Hope, move in the opposite direction from the east coast of Africa and the Americas to meet growing demand of the mercantile classes. High density timbers of this variety are collectively known as Hongmu, and includes mahoganies & mahogany generics. Traditional Asian high density timbers should be referred to as Huali; Huanghuali; Zitan; & Huangtan. This distinction becomes difficult as the term Huangtan seems to have fallen out of circulation since reduction of the Traditional Chinese alphabet to Mandarin, & thus all bleeched Asian variety high density timbers now collectively referred to as Huanghuali. This is where the confusion springs from, as the current nomenclature lacks the sophistication of 'Chi Sung Kung' (restoration dept of Zijin Cheng) nomenclature. One less word means the distinction no longer makes sense.
As far as pragmatic application of this concept & your piece of furniture is concerned, in attribution of which part of this significant alteration to the infrastructure of the planet we're attributing this piece to, you need to be asking yourself whether it will have been necessary to make your piece with a two element top if there is an abundance of Pterocarpus soyauxii (west african zitan) on the market.
It's funny actually that in certain cases as far as Chinese furniture is concerned, what would appear to be a fatal flaw to the uninformed, can turn out to be most significant evidence the piece important.

Kirk,

It seems there is some misunderstanding here and it was probably my fault; I am not that good an English writer.

I wanted to say that pieces made with both woods (zitan with parts made of hongmu - sometimes maybe as a result to later replacements because of repairs) are not rare. Examples are visible in the literature (in the Hung collection, in Ellworth's first book,...). I have seen a few with my own eyes in France and also seen two unpublished tables in pictures, taken in China, by L. Colson (Galerie Luohan in Paris). Last but not least, I even myself possess an 18th century -probably Kang'shi- zitan side table where all decorative double rings, a side stretcher and maybe its upper corresponding top frame are made of Hongmu. This is not to say that all pieces made in zitan are indeed mixed, but mixed examples are known and are definitely "not rare" (!).

I surely do not know about botanical species (and am not really interested about this anyways) and even thought there was no clear and definite conclusion on the subject (articles by C. Clunas, N. Grindley and private communications with C. Cooke), at least according to a couple of years ago' connoisseurship. I have to admit I haven't followed the subject as much as I used to do a few years from now.

Still thank you for letting me have a chance to correct myself and many thanks for your additions.

Yours,

Phil

Phil,
Given.

Following chairman Mao's destruction of symbols of opulence policy during the 1960's, the greater part of the wealth of China's cultural heritage was symbolically burned on vast bonfires in City centers throughout the mainland. Pieces of clean and functional design were at this time in many cases spared the bonfires to be dismantled and stored in huge warehouses for use of the people. Fate it would seem does not come without a sense of Irony, as it is widely accepted that Chinese furniture reached it's zenith during the latter Ming; Transitional; & early Qing period. The entire ethos and sophistication of Ming furniture design is based on austerity of form and silhouettes; the intrinsic quality of the raw material itself; and sublime accuracy in execution.

A number of extremely good pieces of Ming and early Qing furniture of austere design survived these purges, and were reconstituted often incorporating components from other pieces of furniture (It is in the nature of components to go missing when furniture is dismantled)

Reconstituted zitan furniture incorporating hongmu components are "not rare".

(images c.o: Roger Schwendeman post)

Best wishes,
Kirk

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