Reading, Beard in Hand

Viewing notes

A viewer's written impression — not a buyer review or first-hand record

This polychrome warrior deity sits wide and commanding. The brows are thick over glaring eyes, and the long black beard sweeps diagonally across the chest, its ends gathered in the right hand; the left holds a thread-bound book, the gaze cast sideways as if the reader had just looked up from a crucial passage. A gold-trimmed band binds the hair. Over a teal-green robe embroidered with dragons among clouds he wears gilded armour scales; sea-wave patterns spread across the hem, and the feet are shod in black boots worked with gold. The seat is a throne of deep brown carved with dragons — a towering backrest wound with coiling dragons, armrests shaped as dragon heads — standing on a red-topped plinth dense with carving, dark and weighty. Martial yet lettered, the figure suits a place of honour for protection, or the principal seat of a room, where it holds the space by sheer presence.