A RARE 'CRANE-CRY AUTUMN MOON' STYLE LACQUERED 'HUNDRED-PATCH' GUQIN

Ming Dynasty

Footnotes

明 鶴鳴秋月式百衲琴

Provenance: Cecilia Lindqvist (1932-2021), Stockholm, acquired in Beijing in 1962

Published and Illustrated: C.Lindqvist, Qin, Beijing, 2017, p.33

來源：林西莉（1932-2021），斯德哥爾摩，在1962年獲得於北京

著錄：林西莉，《古琴》，北京，2017年，第33頁

Cecilia Lindqvist was a famous Swedish sinologist and musician of the guqin. She was born in Lund, Sweden, in 1932, and had long held a fascination with China and its ancient history. She first visited China when she was 28 with letters of recommendation including one from the King of Sweden. It was there that she learnt to play the guqin in 'Beijing Guqin Research Association' (北京古琴研究會) under the tutelage of Wang Di. She wrote in the preface to her book Qin:

In the early spring of 1961 I saw a Chinese qin at close quarters for the first time. It was lying in front of me on a wooden table in a bare classroom at the University of Peking. Seven strings of tightly twisted silk stretched over a sound box made of black lacquered wood. After a certain amount of difficulty I had managed to get hold of a Chinese student who had promised to try to teach me the basics of playing the qin, and we were due to have our first lesson. He had brought his instrument with him. It dated from the Ming dynasty (1368-1644), and had been passed down through his family since that time.

When I touched one of the strings, the tone that was released made the whole room vibrate. It was as clear as silver, but remarkably it also had a kind of metallic dullness, as if the instrument were made not of wood, but of bronze. During the years which followed it was precisely the tone of the instrument that captivated me the most, from the finest bell-like tones or fanyin, 'the floating sounds' as they are called in Chinese – delicate as the sound of the tiny temple bells right on the edge of the roof timbers when the wind gently stirs them – to the vibrating depths of the thick bass strings.

The present lot was given to her by the 'Beijing Guqin Research Association' as a gift, which was of great significance to her career as a musician and sinologist. In her own words, 'this qin, and the people that I met in the Beijing Guqin Research Association are the important reasons why I write this book (Qin)'. She included the present lot in her monograph on qin as an example of the 'hundred-patch' qin (百衲琴) that is made of many hexagonal wutong wood sections and requires a high level of adhesive technique to enable an impeccable sound. See Cecilia Lindqvist, Qin, Beijing, 2017, pp.30-33. Apart from the rare 'hundred-patch' construction, its rare shape is known as 'Crane-cry Autumn Moon' (鶴鳴秋月), as it was said to resemble a crane with its wings tucked and standing upright.

Compare with a related 'crane-cry Autumn Moon' style guqin, Ming dynasty, in the Hunan Provincial Museum, cited in 'Hunan sheng bowuguan guancang guqin zhi kaobian yu yanjiu (zai xu), Hunan sheng bowuguan guankan, 4, 2007, pp.424-428.

See a 'Confucius-style' huanghuali and zitan 'hundred-patch' guqin, Ming dynasty, which was sold at Bonhams Hong Kong, 1 December 2020, lot 13.