Wrist Rest with Scene from "The West Chamber"
Not on view
The motif of a woman reading a letter is most likely based on a woodblock print illustrating a scene from a fourteenth-century play known as either The West Chamber or The Romance of the West Chamber. This play, which tells of the convoluted romance between a young scholar and a beautiful woman, is one of the most well known in Chinese history, and allusions to some of its more famous moments are often found in the visual arts.