This Chinese lacquered cabinet is one of a pair that the owner helped his mother select in 1946. It typifies the carving found on many such cabinets and attests to the staying power of fine lacquerware.

Tim A. Rutherford photo

What must it have been like for an American boy of 11 to move with his family to Beijing in 1946, only months after the end of World War II, as the rising tide of events in China was about to inundate an ancient civilization in one of the 20th century's most profound cultural transformations?

As you might imagine, the experience would leave the young man with some exceedingly vivid memories of his stay in the eye of the gathering maelstrom, and those memories seem no less vivid when he recalls them now, 55 years later. The boy of 1946 went on to follow his father in a military career, like his father attained the rank of colonel, and retired with his wife to The Landings on Skidaway Island. Along with his recollections of life in Beijing on the eve of the Communist revolution, he has several tangible souvenirs of his sojourn in the Chinese capital. He has asked that his name not be included in this story.

It was just after Thanksgiving in 1945 when President Harry Truman called General George C. Marshall back from an exceedingly brief retirement (less than 24 hours) and asked the highly respected former Army chief of staff to go to China and intervene in the intensifying civil war between Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalists and the Communists under the charismatic Mao Tse-tung.

Then, as now, events in China had significant political ramifications in the United States and Truman needed an envoy whose reputation for fairness and rectitude could not be assailed either by the president's political foes here or by the warring factions in China.

Marshall was joined in China by a staff of military men, among them an Army colonel who brought along his wife and 11-year-old son. The American officers and their families were billeted within a walled diplomatic compound in Beijing, and Nationalist officials provided a Chinese staff for each household. Despite the tense atmosphere outside the compound's walls, the Americans' lives settled into a comfortable daily routine with the help of their Chinese servants. The major-domo of the household was referred to as the Number One Boy, who, among other duties, acted as a sort of filter between the Americans and the Chinese merchants who wished to do business with them.

When the colonel's wife decided she would like to see some Chinese antiques, she turned to the Number One Boy.

The city's business district was crisscrossed by streets lined with shops, and the shops of one street were entirely devoted to the sale of antique furniture. It was, however, practically unheard of for an American woman from the diplomatic compound to venture into the shopping districts. It was not the threat of physical harm that kept the Americans away, but the sheer numbers of jostling Chinese and the clouds of dust and dirt.

Number One Boy chose a furniture merchant he deemed suitable to serve his American family. The chosen merchant brought three pairs of lacquered cabinets to the colonel's home in the compound and left them for the family's approval. The lady of the house asked her son's opinion on which set to buy and he chose a matching pair in black lacquer, covered with traditional Chinese designs and landscape scenes in burnished, amber gold. He remembers the cost of the pair to have been the equivalent of $80.

The two cabinets, now occupying a prominent place in a Skidaway Island home, made their way out of China late in 1946 along with the family's other possessions, possibly aboard the same train that took the family from Beijing to the Chinese coast. Beijing was becoming an increasingly dangerous place for the Americans and they were ordered to leave.

Now, as a grown man, the colonel's son says he has always had a feeling that the two lacquered cabinets were his, since although he did not pay for them, he had a large part in the final decision to buy them.

Within a few years after Marshall's departure, Chairman Mao's version of Communism spread across China and the Nationalists under Chiang Kai-shek fled to Taiwan. The Communists had no use for lacquered cabinets or any of the other art objects that adorned the homes of the oppressor classes. This severe disdain for China's cultural past came to a violent head during the 1960s, when Mao's Red Guards roamed the country obliterating all symbols of elitism.

As emblems of old China, furniture and art objects were often pulled from the homes of merchants and scholars and carted off, consigned either to flames or stored in Peoples Liberation Army warehouses. The furniture sat in those dank warehouses until the advent of reforms under Deng Xiaoping in the 1980s. Deng redistributed the warehoused furniture and a great quantity found its way into the homes of poor farmers and workers who had little idea of its original use.

That furniture was discovered by Western buyers beginning in the 1990s and its impoverished owners were, and are, only too glad to sell for what must seem fantastic sums. A good many of these pieces find their way into this country in various stages of repair and restoration. The Peoples Liberation Army is said to retain a large stockpile in its warehouses and to release batches onto the market at regular intervals, the proceeds going to support the PLA.

This furniture is frequently referred to in the West as Chinese country antiques, perhaps because it is often found in rural areas. Much of it was made during the last half of the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911), but it wasn't made for farmers. The pieces originally were commissioned by the well-to-do and sometimes made at their homes, under their direction and according to their own designs, by local cabinetmakers and lacquer artisans.

As a consequence, pieces may often bear the "chop," or identifying stamp, of the owner, not the maker. Chinese artisans were highly respected in their community, but were culturally disinclined to seek celebrity.

The colonel's cabinets may well be late Qing period pieces. They have a somewhat thinner coating of lacquer, which may indicate a later date. Much older pieces are generally thought to have thicker lacquer and deep surface cracking. But speaking with certainty about the age and provenance of Chinese furniture is risky business. Chinese furniture styles, decoration, construction methods and surface coatings have changed little over the centuries.

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Lacquered objects can be long-lasting treasures if cared for properly

By Jim Gannam
For Coastal Antiques & Art

If you were to visit a furniture factory sometime in the mid- to late-20th century, you would have seen lines of unfinished dining chairs hanging from hooks on a conveyer, like chicken carcasses at a poultry processing plant. The suspended chairs would be passing through spray booths in which they were squirted with several coats of a clear, quick-drying finish called lacquer.

This lacquer is an extremely flammable, even explosive, chemical concoction that also happens to be an eye, ear, nose and throat irritant and a major cause of localized air pollution. A modern lacquer finish, if treated with average care, will slowly degrade over a couple of decades and will then require removal with a harsh, flammable chemical concoction known as stripper.

If you were to visit the Asia gallery at the British Museum, you could see exquisite and brightly colored lacquered household objects dating from China's T'ang Dynasty, which began in 618 A.D. The craft technique that produced these objects was perfected in Asia 800 years before the time of Christ.

The purpose of this admittedly unfair comparison of lacquers is to illustrate that the two types of finish have very little in common beyond their name. Modern lacquer dries by rapid evaporation of a volatile solvent and this process can be stymied by high humidity. Oriental lacquer undergoes a complex internal curing process that is aided by high humidity. Modern lacquer finishes can be ruined by relatively brief contact with water. Ancient lacquered objects have actually been found intact after centuries underwater.

Nor should Oriental lacquer be confused with shellac. Both are made from materials found in nature, both are harvested from trees. But lacquer is taken out of trees of the cashew and sumac families in much the same way as Georgia pines are tapped for rosin. Shellac is a resin that is excreted onto tree branches by insects that have eaten the trees' leaves. Shellac mixed with pigments was used in England in the 17th and 18th centuries to produce "japanned" furniture to imitate genuine Eastern lacquered pieces.

To produce lacquered pieces, Eastern craftsmen first constructed the basic forms in wood or some other material and then built up layers of lacquer at the rate of one per day. Before the addition of the next coat, rubbing carefully smoothed each layer. Between coatings, the furniture was allowed to dry in a dust-free and very humid room. Unlike paint, lacquer can be applied in hundreds of layers and when it attains a sufficient thickness, it can then be deeply carved or decorated with bas-relief images.

A key to preserving any lacquered object, or any fine furniture, is the control of humidity and exposure to sunlight. Seasonal changes in air moisture caused by heating and air conditioning will trigger movement in the material beneath the lacquer surface, resulting in cracks and eventual detachment of the lacquer from the body of the piece. Ultraviolet radiation in sunlight will fade the pigments in lacquer and can make the lacquer more fragile.

Owners of lacquerware also should avoid the use of modern spray polishes and products. The silicones and solvents in these preparations can degrade the lacquer surface. Regular dusting with a soft cloth, taking care not to snag loose bits of lacquer, is recommended, as is the infrequent (once every few years) use of a high quality carnauba paste wax. Be sure to test the wax on a very small area of the piece, especially on any painted surface decorations, before application to the entire surface. Buff the wax with great care. Do not entrust this work to persons who have no financial or emotional investment in your lacquerware.

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Young man's constitution was rewarded by Chinese general

By Jim Gannam
For Coastal Antiques & Art

Since the time of Marco Polo, visitors to foreign lands have brought back indelible memories along with their souvenirs, and in most cases, the indigenous cuisine leaves the most indelible memories of all.

The young boy who went to China with his father the colonel on George Marshall's 1946 peace mission is no exception. His memories of certain culinary experiences seem, with good reason, as vivid now as they must have been those many years ago.

The colonel had, for example, established a rule in the family's Beijing residence that Tuesday dinner each week would always be authentic local recipes prepared in traditional fashion by the native Chinese household staff. As the relationship between the colonel's family and the staff grew to be one of mutual respect, the staff once took it upon themselves to accord the colonel and his family a singular gastronomic honor.

The regular Tuesday night repast was, on this memorable occasion, augmented with roast pheasant, including, as is the ancient Chinese custom, the succulent bird's walnut-size brain. The offering of these cooked cranial contents was considered one of the highest tokens of esteem the kitchen staff could bestow upon the master of the house and his family. To refuse such an honor, no matter how politely, would be unthinkable.

There are limits, however, to what a red-blooded American boy can be expected to swallow. The colonel's son found his limit at a state dinner hosted by a Nationalist Chinese army general.

The young man was under strict instructions from his father not to refuse any morsel offered him, and, for most of the dinner, accepted each delicacy with diplomatic aplomb and outward relish.

When the sea slugs were served, however, the scene was set for a possible international incident. The slugs, as recalled by the man who was that boy, were gelatinous cubes that looked bad and tasted much, much worse. He dutifully forced down the first serving, only to be rewarded with seconds. There being no handy potted plants into which the slugs might be jettisoned, the boy was forced to decline to eat them.

The general was later informed that the youngster had done his best to stomach the slugs and avoid an insult to his host, and for that the colonel's son was rewarded with the gift of a pair of the general's personal silver-tipped ivory chopsticks. The silver tips of these striking utensils have the added advantage of turning black when inserted into food or drink that contains arsenic, which was for centuries the poison of choice for political assassination both in China and the West.