Wooden golden lacquer birdsong cage

[Wooden gold-painted birdcage]

Wooden gold-painted birdcage, clear, 49cm high, 29cm diameter. The old collection of the Qing Palace
The birdcage is round, and the base contains music and mechanical devices to control the movement of birds. After starting, the birds turned around while singing in the music. This is one of the main types of mechanical toys in the Forbidden City. It also entered the palace in large numbers in the late Qing Dynasty and the small imperial period, and became a new type of toy for Puyi
Carrying cage birds was one of the entertainment ways in the Qing Dynasty. A folklorist once described the bird breeding ceremony in Beijing as follows: “From the urchins and the poor to the gentry and the rich, all of them have a bird in their hands and roam the street market, which can be described as a national frenzy.” To cater to this trend, European watchmakers imported the mechanical device of bird-sound cage into China, which was used as a novelty display in the court