A rectangular tray with a deep everted border on all four sides, made from carved, lacquered and gilded Chinese camphor wood (Cinnamomum camphora). While the border is carved with a lotus petal frieze, the main panel features a circular medallion in the centre carved with a Pelican vulning herself (or Pie pellicane), and carved quarters of a circle set on the corners depicting flying doves (the Holy Spirit). The border panels are dovetailed together, while the underside panel is dovetailed and pinned to the borders with typical Chinese metal peg-shaped nails.[1] Except for the underside, the tray is lacquered in black, with the low-relief carved elements highlighted in gold. Such objects are known in Portuguese as bandejas or tabuleiros. On the first word, the early modern lexicographer Rafael Bluteau (1638-1734) in his Vocabulario Portuguez e Latino (1712-1721) says that these are wooden round vessels with everted rims within which gifts were sent to friends. As for tabuleiro, which fully corresponds to the present tray, Bluteu explains that this is an oblong vessel with an everted rim used to serve bread and sweets. When raised on a trestle, such trays could also be used as portable tables similarly for serving food. This may be observed from contemporary Namban screens - made in Japan for the local merchant elite - where the Portuguese ship’s captain, sitting on a Chinese folding horseshoe armchair, is being served from a gilded tray set on a low table with cabriole legs - see Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga, Lisbon (inv. 1638 Mov).

This particular shape is Chinese in origin and its introduction in Europe dates to the early modern period, via similarly lacquered objects and also smaller versions in porcelain. Usually set on small feet, yet also raised on more elaborate stands, the Chinese prototype would serve as a model for similarly-shaped European objects, such as porcelain trays known in French as plateau de déjeuner produced in the eighteenth century. Its Chinese origin is nonetheless much earlier and probably first made in precious metal and then copied in less costly materials.[2] An oblong rectangular monochrome black lacquered tray with a scalloped everted border, seemingly copying a gold or silver prototype, from the late Song dynasty and made around 1127-1279, belongs to the National Museum of Asian Art, Washington (inv. S1987.364). Similarly-shaped lacquered trays destined for the home market and made in the late Ming dynasty, from the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, are more abundant. A rare late Ming dynasty tray (47.3 cm in length) with indented corners and lacquered in vivid colours highlighted in gold, now in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London (inv. Fe.91-1974), has a Tianqi reign mark (r. 1620-1627) and a cylindrical date corresponding to 1624 on the plain black underside.

This tray belongs to a rare group of similarly-shaped objects sharing the same materials and simplified manufacturing techniques typical of Chinese export wares.[3] Some of their lacquer coatings have been scientifically analysed and identified as laccol, from the sap of lacquer trees of the species Rhus succedanea, and decorated with gold leaf following Chinese techniques (tiējīnqī, or haku-e in Japanese), and in some instances featuring mother-of-pearl inlays. Not only the shape and decorative techniques are Chinese, but also its thin lacquer coating (lacquer, oils, etc.) since laccol is produced from the sap of lacquer trees native to Vietnam, China and Japan, and was widely used in Chinese lacquers. The presence of these trays has been recorded in contemporary late sixteenth and early seventeenth-century Portuguese inventories. The most eloquent testimony is given in the inventories of Fernando de Noronha (ca. 1540-1698), 3rd Earl of Linhares and his wife Filipa de Sá (†1618) which record a large number of lacquered and gilded Asian objects.[4] Contrary to less reliable contemporary European sources, these exotic commodities are accurately recorded in Portuguese inventories regarding their geographical origin. In the Linhares inventories, a distinction is made between lacquer wares made in the Kingdom of Pegu (in present-day southern Myanmar) and China. Their post-mortem inventories record ‘four trays from China’, including three with the Linhares coat of arms, all ‘gilded and black’, and another three, totalling seven lacquered trays.[5] The geographical identification of this production has nonetheless continued to puzzle curators, art historians and conservators, even giving rise to unlikely, unsubstantiated hypotheses.[6] These include Indian (Cochin or the Gulf of Bengal), Ryukyuan (from the Japanese Ryukyu Islands, then tributary of imperial China), Chinese (Macau) with purported Japanese influence, and even the idea that objects were being carved in one place and lacquered in another. Yet, the scientific analysis and identification of coating materials, decorative techniques and ample archival documentation all point to their South Chinese origin, likely somewhere in the provinces of Guangdong and Fukien.

The most important group of these Chinese carved and lacquered trays belong to the Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga in Lisbon (inv. 1 Band, 2 Band, 3 Band, 26 Band, and 44 Band). Before entering the museum collection, all belonged to feminine religious institutions. The Museu de Aveiro (inv. 120/F) holds one large tray (70.5 x 43.0 cm) featuring a double-headed eagle on its central medallion and stylised floral motifs on the corners. One other (68.0 x 43.5 cm), featuring the Augustinian emblem of a heart trespassed by two arrows on the central medallion and stylised animals (lions?) on the corners, belongs to the Museu Nacional Frei Manuel do Cenáculo, Évora (inv. ME 1076); on the underside an inscription in Chinese characters. From the Convent of Jesus in Aveiro, it lacks most of its lacquered coating. From the same group, decorated with mother-of-pearl, belongs a much smaller tray (38.5 x 22.5 cm) once in the collection of Fernando Távora (1923-2005), Porto; another (67.5 x 44.0 cm) once in the collection of Luís Pádua Ramos (1931-2005), Porto; and other (65.0 x 41.5 cm) in the Collection Távora Sequeira Pinto, Porto. Given their shared features, these seem to have been made around the same workshops. The most elaborate of these carved and lacquered trays (68.0 x 34.0 cm) now belongs to the collection of António Horta Osório, Lisbon-London. Unlike the other known trays, it features an exuberant pattern of circles and stylised leaves on both the interior and borders, and is decorated in gold and highlighted with mother-of-pearl inlays.[7] More elaborate, and probably made elsewhere in China, mention should be made of a tray (67.8 x 43.8 cm) profusely decorated with mother-of-pearl and not carved like the previous examples.[8] It once belonged to the collection of José Lico, Lisbon. It features a courtly love scene on an oval strapwork cartouche copying a contemporary European engraving. Namban examples, made in Japan for export to the European market, albeit much more rare are also known. One such Namban tray (4.1 x 76.5 x 41.0 cm), profusely decorated with mother-of-pearl inlays, belongs to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (inv. 2002.2). Another, partially made from Japanese cypress (Chamaecyparis obtusa) and decorated with mother-of-pearl (62.2 x 36.8 cm), belongs to the aforementioned Lisbon museum (inv. 20 Band).

One tray in the Lisbon museum (68.0 x 41.0 cm) is identical to the present one, both seemingly made in the same workshop (inv. 1 Band). Similarly featuring the lotus-petal frieze, central medallion with the Pelican vulning herself and doves on the corners, the tray in Lisbon lacks most of its original gilding, while the black lacquer coating has become as thin and abraded as to reveal the wood underneath. It originated in the Convent of the Saviour in Lisbon. The vulning pelican, an iconography also known as The Pelican in her piety (the Pie pellicane), depicts a mother pelican cutting into her own flesh to feed her young with her blood. This is symbolic of Jesus Christ shedding his precious blood for the redemption of Humanity, and also a symbol for the Church distributing the graces of Christ’s redemption in the mass and sacraments. It is a symbol of Christian piety and a recurrent motif in early Asian export art made for the Portuguese market. Despite its more evident Christian iconography and its origins within a religious institution, in contrast with the vast majority of the surviving trays, such imagery was nonetheless typical of secular objects made for the highly religious Portuguese elite between the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

[1] On the construction of these trays, see Pedro Cancela de Abreu, “Técnicas de Construção de Objectos Namban”, in Teresa Canepa et al., Depois dos Bárbaros II. Arte Namban para os mercados japonês, português e holandês, London - Lisbon, Jorge Welsh Books, 2008, pp. 59-60.

[2] See Namiko Tahira, “The Influence of Metal Works on Monochrome Lacquer from the Late Tang Dynasty through the Song Dynasty”, in Chan Kuen On (ed.), Proceedings of Conference on Ancient Chinese Lacquer, Hong Kong, Art Museum, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2012, pp. 15-20.

[3] On these simplified techniques, see Ulrike Körber, Michael R. Schilling, Cristina Barrocas Dias, Luís Dias, “Simplified Chinese lacquer techniques and Namban style decoration on Luso-Asian objects from the late sixteenth or early seventeenth centuries”, Studies in Conservation 61, Supplement 3 (2016), pp. 68- 84.

[4] See Hugo Miguel Crespo, “Global Interiors on the Rua Nova in Renaissance Lisbon”, in Annemarie Jordan Gschwend, K. J. P. Lowe (eds.), The Global City. On the Streets of Renaissance Lisbon, London, Paul Holberton publishing, 2015, pp. 121-139.

[5] See Hugo Crespo, Choices, Lisbon - Paris, AR-PAB, 2015, pp. 238-261, cat. 22, ref. p. 254.

[6] See Arakawa Hirokazu, “Ryūkyū Lacquerware in Europe - Focusing on the Haku-e technique”, in Josef Kreiner, (ed.), Sources of Ryūkyūan History and Culture in European Collections, Munique, Iudicium Verlag, 1996, pp.197-217; José Jordão Felgueiras, “Mobiliário Indo-Português dos Austrias”, in El Arte en las Cortes de Carlos V y Felipe II, Madrid, Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, 1999, pp.169-177; Pedro de Moura Carvalho, “Um conjunto de lacas quinhentistas para o Mercado português e a sua atribuição à região de Bengala e costa do Coromandel” in Pedro de Moura Carvalho (ed.), O Mundo da Laca. 2000 Anos de História (cat.), Lisboa, Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian, 2001, pp.126-153; Pedro Dias, Mobiliário Indo-Português, Moreira de Cónegos, Imaginalis, 2013, pp. 415-417; and Ulrike Körber, “The 'Three Brothers': Sixteenth-century Lacquered Indo-Muslin Shields or Commodities for Display”, in Annemarie Jordan Gschwend, K. J. P. Lowe (eds.), The Global City. On the Streets of Renaissance Lisbon, London, Paul Holberton publishing, 2015, pp. 212-225.

[7] See Jorge Santos Alves (ed.), Macau. The First Century of an International Port (exh. cat.), Lisbon, Centro Científico e Cultural de Macau, 2007, pp. 144-145, cat. 38 (entry by Alexandra Curvelo).

[8] See Teresa Canepa et al., Depois dos Bárbaros II. Arte Namban para os mercados japonês, português e holandês, London - Lisbon, Jorge Welsh Books, 2008, pp. 336-339, cat. 48 (entry by Teresa Canepa).