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A zitan table screen, set with a rectangular panel of Dali marble with beige, grey and greenish-black markings which resemble rocky mountain peaks. With a separate zitan stand.
Qing dynasty
Total width of screen: 16 1/8”, 41 cm
Because of their somewhat abstract nature, these panels are often known in the West as ‘dreamstones’. For a similar example, see Tsang and Moss, Arts from the Scholar’s Studio, no. 22, pp. 60-1. In Kernels of Energy, Bones of Earth: The Rock in Chinese Art, the author, Hay, discusses such stone panels (pp. 84--8) and states ‘Mountainscapes in marble are not seen to be “painted” on a geometrically plane surface, but within the depths of a stone’.
