NORTHEAST CHINA, 5TH-3RD CENTURY BC

This pair of rare gold boar-form ornaments is representative of the type of personal ornament favored by the nomadic cultures of northern China during the Eastern Zhou dynasty. The dominant source of design for these ornaments was the animals and birds that surrounded these pastoral people, including ibex, wild asses, horses, stags, deer, rams, tigers, and wild boars. Often the animals are shown in a recumbent or kneeling position, creating a more compact shape. Even though there was a greater use of gold and silver for ornamentation during this period, most of the ornaments were made of bronze, such as a group of seven bronze ornaments cast as kneeling boars discovered in a Warring States tomb at Xinhui Village, Aohan Banner, Liaoning province, illustrated in Treasures on Grassland: Archaeological Finds from Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, Shanghai, 2000, p. 112. Another small bronze garment plaque of a kneeling boar is illustrated by Emma C. Bunker, Ancient Bronzes of the Eastern Eurasian Steppes from the Arthur M. Sackler Collections, The Arthur M. Sackler Foundation, 1997, p. 189, no. 262, where it is dated 5th-3rd century BC and ascribed to Northern China or Inner Mongolia.
Personal ornamentation made of gold was a sign of high status, and just as small animal-form plaques were made in bronze in multiples as ornamentation, so too were those made of gold. This is exemplified by the four gold ornaments cast as recumbent stags in this sale, lot 503, as well as the present pair of gold boars.