Chinese Shagreen Style Pearl Colored Dengzi Ceramic Garden Stool. Has fabric attached to the base to make it suitable for indoor floors to avoid scratching. Small hole in the top in the traditional style of the Chinese Garden stools. 

Condition: Good. 

Size: 13 x 13 x 18 1/4 in. 

Shagreen is a type of rawhide consisting of rough untanned skin, historically from a horse’s or onager’s back, or from shark or ray. The word derives from the French “chagrin” and is related to Italian “zigrino” and Venetian “sagrin,” both loosely meaning “rump of a horse” or the prepared skin of this part. The roughness of its texture led to the French meaning of anxiety, vexation, embarrassment, or annoyance. Shagreen has an unusually rough and granular surface, and is sometimes used as a fancy leather for book bindings, pocketbooks, and small cases, as well as its more utilitarian uses in the hilts and scabbards of swords and daggers, where slipperiness is a disadvantage. In Asia, the Japanese tachi, katana, and wakizashi swords had their hilts almost always covered in undyed rawhide shagreen, while in China its use dates back to the 2nd Century CE, was traditionally used on Qing Dynasty composite bows. Typically the ears and the spaces above and beneath the grip were covered by polished shagreen (in which the calcified papillae are reduced to equal height and form a uniform surface), sometimes with inlay work of different coloured shagreen. Shagreen was a very common cover for 19th Century reading glasses containers as well as other utensil boxes from China. In the 17th and early 18th Centuries the term “shagreen” began to be applied to leather made from sharkskin or the skin of a rayfish, which was first popularised in Europe by Jean-Claude Galluchat, a master leatherworker in the court of Louis XV of France. It quickly became fashionable amongst the French aristocracy, and migrated throughout Europe. Its popularity in Central Asia, where green footwear made of shagreen was popular up into the 19th Century, probably came as the result of its introduction from China perhaps during the 16th Century rule of Suleiman the Magnificent. Since the 18th Century shagreen has typically been used for covering portable items such as luggage, toilet cases, and other boxes, due in part to the water-resistant qualities ascribed to the finish. After falling out of fashion after the Art Deco period in the 1930s it experienced a resurgence in the 1970s, and even now the style remains popular, particularly in emerging Asian markets.

Good.