A four-panel embellished hard wood screen, 20th century, each panel inlaid with various materials including, Mother-of-pearl, bone, soapstone and wood with polychrome decoration, to depict birds and animals beside plants and rockwork, the upper section with a cockerel, crane, peacock and pheasant beside maple, peach, prunus and magnolia trees, flowering plants and 'lingzhi' fungus, above panels of lions and mythical beasts with their cubs, the reverse with gilt inscriptions, each panel 194 cm high, 48 cm wide
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- Maple - Maple, native to North America, is a dense heavy timber from light to yellow-brown in colour. It has very little distincive graining unless it is one of the variants such as birds-eye maple or burr maple, so was not used extensively for furniture in 18th and 19th century, where cabinetmakers and designers preferred timbers with more distinctive features such as mahogany, walnut, rosewood and oak.
Birds-eye maple has a seres of small spots linked by undulating lines in the grain, is highly sough and is used as a decorative veneer. Burr maple has larger and irregular grain swirls than birds-eye maple.
- Polychrome - Made or finished in many colours. For furniture, it is used to indicated a painted finish.
- Mother-Of-Pearl - Mother-of-pearl, technical name "nacre", is the inner layer of a sea shell. The iridescent colours and strength of this material were widely used in the nineteenth century as an inlay in jewellery, furniture, (especially papier mache furniture) and musical instruments.
In the early 1900s it was used to make pearl buttons. Mother-of-pearl is a soft material that is easily cut or engraved.
Nowadays it is a by-product of the oyster, freshwater pearl mussel and abalone industries.
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