Tibetan Cabinet with Buddhist Motifs

Four doors, four gold inscriptions, and a sky full of tidy clouds.

This cabinet with Buddhist motifs comes from Tibet and dates to the 19th century. It is painted wood. Tibetan families and monasteries used cabinets like this to store ritual objects, texts and household goods, and their painted Buddhist imagery was meant to bring protection and good fortune. Each of the four panels here holds a tall gold script character on a rust-red ground, surrounded by green and violet clouds, with scrolling corners. A gold vine runs along the frame, and a painted band tops the cornice. Forty-five inches long and 39 high.

Plain doors would have been easier. Nobody here seems to have considered it.