Tall East-Asian, black lacquer and cinnabar, gilt candlesticks

Tall Pegu, black lacquer and cinnabar, gilt candlesticks.
Artocarpus, cinnabar, thitsi lacquer, gold leaf.
South-China (Guangzhou), or Pegu.
Late 16th century — early 17th century.
h. 38 cm (15 in).

The first occasion on which scholars systematically studied the production to which these candlesticks belong was with Bernardo Ferrão, who classified the group as Indo-Portuguese (Ferrão 1990). This rare and significant group of so-called ‘Luso-Asian’ lacquers, a classification since contested, has since occupied Portuguese decorative arts’ historiography, resisting a consensual identification of its place of production.

Ferrão observes that these objects display “the style and decoration, the lacquer coating and, in some examples, the presence of coats of arms, inscriptions in Portuguese, figures and mythological scenes, from classical and Christian European culture […] all following the canons of Renaissance art.” On these grounds, one early hypothesis located their production in India, notably at Cochin or along the Coromandel Coast, citing the supposed use of Indian anjili wood (Artocarpus hirsutus) together with the well-documented trade in lacquer exported from Pegu to India. A competing attribution, directly to Pegu in present-day Burma, rests on more secure archival and scientific evidence. The species necessary for the production of “true lacquer” (thitsi or urushi) are not found on the Indian subcontinent, and scientific examination of objects within this group confirms that they are made of Burmese thitsi lacquer, derived from the sap of Gluta usitata, applied over a core of Artocarpus integer (sonekedat), a species native to Southeast Asia. The use of the shwei-zawa technique—whereby the lacquered surface is carved in low relief and the motifs heightened with gold leaf—likewise supports an attribution to the workshops of Pegu. It has therefore seemed possible to ascribe these objects directly to Pegu, without recourse to the hypothesis of an Indian import of Burmese lacquer.

The stylistic analysis of the present candlesticks, however, points instead towards China. Modelled after Iberian prototypes in turned silver, they display friezes of lotus petals and key-pattern meanders, all carved with angular severity. Both the decorative vocabulary and the manner of execution are characteristic of Chinese lacquer of the early seventeenth century, and are not found on lacquers generally attributed to Pegu. It is therefore probable that these pieces were produced in southern China, most likely in Guangzhou or its environs, during the opening decades of the seventeenth century. The use of Burmese raw materials by highly sophisticated Chinese workshops reconciles the apparent contradiction between the scientific evidence of the group and the stylistic analysis of the candlesticks, while at the same time reflecting the wide regional trade networks that sustained the complex, hybrid production of so-called “Luso-Asian” lacquers.

See Ferrão, ‘Mobiliário’, in História da Arte em Portugal, Vol. 8, Lisbon, 1990 ; Ferrão, Mobiliário Português. Dos Primórdios ao Maneirismo, vol. 3, Porto, 1990 ; Carvalho, ‘Beyond Goa: ‘Luso-Indian’ art in the Bay of Bengal’, in The World of Lacquer: 2000 years of history, Lisbon, 2001 ; Crespo, Choices, Lisbon, 2016 ; Gschwend, Lowe and al., The Global City. Lisbon in the Renaissance, Lisbon, 2017.