Straits Chinese Chanab

Straits Chinese Chanab

China but for the Straits Chinese Market

Gilded and lacquered altar offering platforms or chanabs appear to have been carved in China (in northern Guangdong) and then used locally as well as being exported to Chinese communities in Southeast Asia.

The

chanab was placed in the centre of each Straits Chinese family’s sam kai altar, the most important altar in the family home. The sam kai altar was used for important ceremonies, particularly weddings.

Called a

beet-chien in Penang and a chien-arb or chanab in Malacca and Singapore, offerings of crystallised papaya were placed on top of the chanab as offerings for the God of Heaven.

This

chanab, executed in black and red lacquered and gilded pinewood, is finely carved with scenes from Chinese legends to one side of the carved, open-work, rectangular box cover and with three panels of animals including playful monkeys and deer to the other. The ends of the cover also are coved with gilded Chinese scenes.

The cover sits on a stand that is similarly carved and gilded and which has four feet, each of which sits on moveable, splendidly carved Buddhistic lions.

The cover would have contained a small, separate platform which would have been placed on top of the box when in use. Offerings would have been placed atop this platform. However, the platform is now lost.

The base is marked in black in large Chinese letters with characters which transliterate as ‘De An Li’ , this being a residence of a Qing Dynasty called Fang Yao. This could be an ownership mark meaning that this altar box has come from this residence. Alternatively, the retailer or maker might have named itself after this residence as a brandname. There is also a date ‘bing zi’ which is likely to suggest a year of manufacture of 1876.

Chanabs with inscriptions are uncommon.

Ho, W.M., Straits Chinese Furniture, Times, 1994.

Khoo J.E.,

The Straits Chinese: A Cultural History, Pepin Press, 1996.

Lee, P. and J. Chen,

Rumah Baba: Life in a Peranakan House, National Heritage Board, Singapore, 1998.

Tan, C.B.,

Chinese Peranakan Heritage in Malaysia and Singapore, Penerbit Fajar Bakti, 1993.

UK art market