Chinese Table Top Screen with Marble Insert

A landscape nobody painted, in a frame somebody made to suit it.

This table top screen with marble insert comes from Hebei Province, China, and dates to the 19th century. It is hardwood and marble. Chinese scholars set screens like this on their desks and tables, reading the veins in the stone as misty mountains, a landscape to contemplate indoors. Grey clouds drift across the white marble panel, with one dark plume low in the center. The dark frame stands on shaped feet above an apron carved with fruit and leaves. Thirty-five and a half inches high and twenty-four wide.

The view does not change. That was rather the idea.