A Lacquered Chinese Hand Bellows

A laquered wooden hand bellow decorated in Chinoiserie taste.

France, Mid XVIII Century

cm 33 × 12 × 5

A lacquered wooden hand bellows (soufflet), decorated in gold on a black ground with a continuous Chinoiserie landscape of pagodas, weeping willows, flying birds and small boats. The body retains its original leather strap and brass studs, with minor losses on the tongue where the leather is attached. A laurel-leaf cartouche surrounds the central air hole on the reverse, while the spout is finished in tooled leather with a turned wooden handle. A small ethnographic object of refined taste, evocative of a XIX century collector's cabinet.