Notes:
Similar trays can be seen at various museums including the V&A
Design on this Kangxi lac burgauté tray comes from a deeply rooted Chinese cultural concept known as The Four Noble Professions (Yuxiao Gengdu / 漁樵耕讀), which heavily influenced imperial and decorative arts during the Kangxi period (1662–1722).
The imagery of the woodcutter and the farmer directly represents two of these idealized archetypes.
The Core Meaning: The Four Noble Professions
In Chinese folklore and art, these figures do not merely represent basic laborers. They represent intellectuals or scholars who choose to live a pure, retired life in nature, close to the land and free from corruption. The four professions are: [1]
• Fisherman (Yu / 漁)
• Woodcutter (Qiao / 樵)
• Farmer (Geng / 耕)
• Scholar (Du / 讀) [1]
2. The Direct Artistic Source: The Gengzhi Tu
During the reign of the Emperor Kangxi, this exact theme became exceptionally famous. In 1696, the Emperor commissioned a monumental illustrated book called the Yuzhi Gengzhi Tu (Imperially Commissioned Pictures of Tilling and Weaving).
• It featured 46 high-quality woodblock prints created by court painter Jiao Bingzhen.
• These prints depicted the ideal, peaceful life of farmers plowing the land and harvesting crops.
• The album was distributed to show the Emperor's commitment to agriculture and a well-ordered Confucian society.
• Artisans working in the imperial lacquer workshops or commercial luxury hubs (like Suzhou) used these widely circulated woodblock prints as direct reference manuals. They meticulously translated the paper drawings into iridescent mother-of-pearl (lac burgauté) segments laid into black lacquer. [1, 2]
3. Context
Sets of small square lac burgauté trays were highly popular items for the scholar's desk or for serving wine and snacks to distinguished guests. They were often created as continuous narrative sets. If you look closely at other pieces from the same era, you will notice matching companion trays depicting the complementary figures of the Fisherman and the Scholar reading under a tree, completing the symbolic cycle.
