Cat.105.
Chinese.
Imperial Throne.
Qing dynasty, Qianlong reign, 1736–95.
Carved polychrome lacquer on wood core, 47 x 49½ x 36" (119.3 x 125.7 x 91.4 cm).
V&A W399–1922

Artefacts from the Chinese imperial court, including this grand and ornate throne (and cats. 106–107), enthralled many
nineteenth-century collectors and consequently figure prominently in the Museum’s collection. The throne was almost certainly commissioned in the late 1780s for the Tuanhe Travelling Palace, one of several temporary abodes of the emperors of the Qing dynasty in the Nan Haizi (“southern ponds”) hunting park immediately south of Beijing. This park formed the setting for a number of military reviews celebrating the apogee of Man-chu power in Asia, but was neglected in the nineteenth century and gradually fell into decay. The Nan Haizi park was looted by Russian troops in 1900–01, in the aftermath of the occupation of Beijing by troops of the eight allied powers (including the United States and Great Britain) that invaded China, ostensibly to suppress the so-called Boxer Uprising. The czarist Russian ambassador Mikhail N. Girs acquired the throne in China and brought it to Britain following the Soviet revolution of 1917.
The throne was displayed by the dealer Spink & Son at its St. James’s premises and bought from the firm on behalf of the Museum by George Swift, a major figure in the wholesale potato industry in Britain and, during World War I, a colleague of Edward Fairbrother Strange, the V&A’s furniture curator.
Neither Spink nor the Museum has ever attempted to conceal the origins of the throne, which is valued as much for its imperial associations as for its craftsmanship. It has been on continuous display since its acquisition, labelled until the 1980s as “Throne of Emperor Ch’ien-lung” (Qianlong). Until 1952 the throne had pride of place in the displays of Oriental furniture and woodwork (see fig. 105), and since then has been prominent in the Far Eastern Primary Gallery and the T. T. Tsui Gallery of Chinese Art.
In his 1925 Catalogue of Chinese Lacquer, Strange made the first serious attempt in a European language to provide an overview of lacquer, concentrating on itemising the medium’s most common decorative motifs and their symbolic significance, a style of scholarship derived from the study of Chinese ceramics. More recently, attention has shifted away from the throne’s glamourous lacquer medium and towards the object’s provenance, with an attempt to provide a more precise date and place of manufacture and to understand its role as symbolic of British hegemony in Asia in the popular and institutional imagination.