Two-Drawer Table

While useful for the storage of small items, recessed-leg tables with drawers do not appear often in late Ming woodcuts or paintings and relatively few have survived. The late Ming edition of the Lu Ban Ching carpenter's manual does, however, illustrate a woman using a two-drawer table like this one in combination with a mirror stand as a dressing table. The sumptuous carving of flowering plum branches on the drawer fronts is decoration appropriate to women's furniture.