A VERY RARE AND FINELY CARVED WHITE JADE PENDANT OF A FEMALE DANCER

Details

A VERY RARE AND FINELY CARVED WHITE JADE PENDANT OF A FEMALE DANCER
WARRING STATES PERIOD

The flat plaque carved with gently rounded surfaces as the front and back of a dancer with her arms positioned across her waist and above her head, her robes with striated and cross-hatched borders bound at the waist with a wide sash and falling in vertical folds as the long skirt swings tightly against her body and flares sharply at the hem, the movement of the full sleeves of the outer robe and the long, narrow sleeves of the under-robe indicated by further folds, the simple features of the face framed by the short, wavy locks of hair over the ears and the angular line above the forehead where the hair is pulled back to fall in layered, bound plaits in back, with a rectangular tab pierced for attachment projecting from the hem, the lucent stone with some opaque buff alteration from burial and with a highly polished surface, piece broken off--3¼in. (8.3cm.) high

Provenance

A.W. Bahr Collection, Weybridge

Literature

Alfred Salmony, Carved Jade of Ancient China, Berkley, California, 1938, pl. LI:2

Exhibited

New York, China Institute in America, Chinese Jade through the Ages, October 1968-January 1969, no. 23
London, Oriental Ceramic Society, Victoria and Albert Museum, Chinese Jade throughout the ages, May 1-June 22, 1975, no. 143

Further details

See illustrations of two views

Lot Essay

This flat plaque of a dancer wearing a changpao style robe is most likely part of a pectoral ornament, and is similar to others known from the Late Eastern Zhou period at the site of Jincun near Luoyang in Henan, now in the Freer Gallery of Art, Washington, D. C., H. S. Hansford, Chinese Carved Jades, London, 1968, pl. 34 and included in the exhibition, Chinese Art of the Warring States Period, Freer Gallery of Art, Washington, D. C., 1983, Catalogue pl. 79 for a single dancer and pl. 77 for a pair of conjoined dancers, each almost identical to the Sackler figure. These paired dancers are illustrated at the top of the reconstructed pectoral from Jincun now on exhibit at the Freer Gallery of Art. Other versions of the female sleeve dancer come from the recent excavations from the royal Nanyue Tomb near Guangzhou in Guangdong of Western Han date, Orientations, November, 1991, figs. 33a, 4, p. 86