Chinese Lattice Screen | Partition on Wood Base

Freestanding screen of tiny square windows that lets the light through and the secrets stay.

This lattice screen | partition on wood base is from Shanxi Province, China, and dates to the early 19th century. It is elm wood. Once China slowly opened to visiting diplomats and businessmen, a trickle of antique furniture leaving the country became a flood that lasted through the 1980s, the 1990s and into the early 2000s. Tall rectangular frame filled with a regular grid of open squares above a denser, finely latticed lower panel. Two flat foot blocks brace the base. The finish is orange-red and rubbed lighter along the edges. It is 46 inches long, 2 deep and 67 high.

Privacy by suggestion, which is the politest kind.