Chinese Mirrored Dressing Table with Hidden Compartments: Stool with Cracked Ice Design

A dressing table with secrets. It was not built to tell them.

This mirrored dressing table with hidden compartments, and its stool with a cracked ice design, comes from China and dates to the 20th century. It is rosewood with burlwood insets. Dressing tables like this served women in well-off Chinese homes, keeping cosmetics, combs and jewelry close to a mirror; cracked ice, a lattice imitating fractured ice, was a favored pattern. Five small drawers carry panels of glowing orange burl. Pierced scrolls fill the corners under the case. Low down, the lattice sits in a dark, angular web above round, bulbous feet. Twenty-eight inches long and 31.5 high.

Where exactly the compartments are is for the owner to find out.