AN IMPORTANT LACQUERED PHOENIX-STYLE QIN SONG DYNASTY (960-1279) Of phoenix-style, the graceful arched wooden body tapers gently from the shoulders to the tail with two conjoined grooved semi-circles on either side of the waist. The top board is made of wutong wood (Firmiana simplex) and inlaid with thirteen gold studs, hui, joined with the lower board made of hardwood, all supported on two later replated zitan pegs, yanzu, ‘Wild Geese Feet’. The lower board is pierced with a long rectangular sound hole, longchi, ‘Dragon’s Pool’, above a two-character carved seal, Baohan, ‘Inclusion’, and a shorter rectangular sound hole, fengzhao, ‘Phoenix Pond’. There is a carved thirteen-character inscription below the right side of the ‘Dragon’s Pool’, which may be translated ‘Lei Wen of the Great Tang dynasty made this qin in the Eastern Chamber of Yuanyan Studio’, and a seventeen-character (two characters indecipherable) inscription below the left side of the ‘Dragon’s Pool’, which may be translated ‘Zhu Zhiyuan repaired this qin, which is made of superb materials and produces excellent sound’, both inscriptions filled with cinnabar lacquer. The surfaces are covered by original layers of cinnabar and chestnut-coloured lacquers, followed by another layer of lacquer containing remains of deer antler, with a few further areas further lacquered during the Ming dynasty possibly for stabilisation and repair. The original lacquer layers are suffused with snake-belly crackles with even finer cow-hair crackles and icecrackles in between. Overall length: 48 in. (121.8 cm.) Effective length of the string: 43 7/8 in. (111.5 cm.) Width of shoulders: 7 3/4 in. (19.8 cm.) Width of tail: 5 13/16 in. (14.8 cm.) Thickness: 1 3/4 in. (4.4 cm.)