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Lot Essay
A SHORT NOTE ON BELT HOOKS
Hsiung Yi-Ching
Although jade plaques resembling belt hooks have been excavated from Liangzhu Culture sites, no actual belt hooks have been found. The belt hooks as we know them only started to appear in late Spring and Autumn period. By mid Warring States period, the use of belt hooks was commonplace and many excavated and heirloom examples exist. Most of them were made of bronze, but there were also examples made of gold, silver, iron and jade etc., as well as multi-media examples.
Belt hooks were not only a necessity in daily wear during this period, they were also status symbols, especially for the aristocrats and the upper classes. Their belt hooks were made with much attention to detail, decorated with gold or jade for sumptuousness, in order to signify the wearer’s exalted status and showing the fashion of the day.
It is recorded in Huainanzi composed in early Western Han dynasty that: ‘As one looks at the guests in this fully attended hall, each was wearing a unique belt hook, attached to a singular ring and belt.’ These personal luxury items were a means to show one’s status in a group setting.
Belt hooks were called xipi in ancient times. In Hanshu: Xiongnuzhuan (History of Han: Accounts on the Xiongnu tribe), Yan Shigu noted in the commentary that: ‘Xipi – the tribal people use it as belt hooks; it was also called xianbei or shibi, all denoting the same thing, just with different accents.’ It was recorded in Shiji suoyin (Index to the Records of the Grand Historian) by Zhang Yan that: ‘xianbei – an auspicious animal found on guoluo belts, the eastern tribal people were fond of wearing them.’ Guoluo belts were leather belts worn by the Tujue tribe; while xianbei was a type of five-clawed tiger in the Mongolian language. The Xianbei people worshipped it, and use it as their tribal name. They also made casts of it to decorate their belts. Archaeologist Wang Guowei (1877-1927) and Japanese historian Shiratori Kurakichi (1865-1942) both adopted this theory that xianbei, xipi and shibi were one and the same, and denote belt hooks of tribal people.
When discussing ‘belt hooks’ as a collecting category, we have to view them from a multi-cultural perspective as works of art that have an unbridled, diverse quality. A Western Han dynasty yellow jade belt hook (formerly in the collection of Shanghai collector Chen Rentao in 1930s and 1940s, and later that of Baroness von Oertzen), estimated at £600,000-800,000, was sold in Christie’s London, 3 November 2020, for the price of £2,902,500 (25,200,000 RMB), making it the most expensive archaic jade belt hook ever sold at auction, and showing the value collectors placed on rare jade belt hooks.
How were belt hooks used? According to scholars, the hook would have been fastened pointing to the left, with the left hand holding the belt and the right hand holding the hook, the leather or silk/textile belt was tied to the hook. In March of 1998, Dr. Yang Chün-Hsiung of Yangdetang Collection donated a set of bronze belt buckle with its original silk belt dating to the Warring States period (the silk was carbon-14 tested by the Rafter Radiocarbon Laboratory in New Zealand to be of the period) to the Taipei Palace Museum, providing researchers with an invaluable physical example of how early belt hooks were used. In later times, belt hooks take on a more ornamental function, and were worn as pendants besides being used for belt fastening, with ever more refined decoration, and became real collector’s items.
Hsiung Yi-Ching
Although jade plaques resembling belt hooks have been excavated from Liangzhu Culture sites, no actual belt hooks have been found. The belt hooks as we know them only started to appear in late Spring and Autumn period. By mid Warring States period, the use of belt hooks was commonplace and many excavated and heirloom examples exist. Most of them were made of bronze, but there were also examples made of gold, silver, iron and jade etc., as well as multi-media examples.
Belt hooks were not only a necessity in daily wear during this period, they were also status symbols, especially for the aristocrats and the upper classes. Their belt hooks were made with much attention to detail, decorated with gold or jade for sumptuousness, in order to signify the wearer’s exalted status and showing the fashion of the day.
It is recorded in Huainanzi composed in early Western Han dynasty that: ‘As one looks at the guests in this fully attended hall, each was wearing a unique belt hook, attached to a singular ring and belt.’ These personal luxury items were a means to show one’s status in a group setting.
Belt hooks were called xipi in ancient times. In Hanshu: Xiongnuzhuan (History of Han: Accounts on the Xiongnu tribe), Yan Shigu noted in the commentary that: ‘Xipi – the tribal people use it as belt hooks; it was also called xianbei or shibi, all denoting the same thing, just with different accents.’ It was recorded in Shiji suoyin (Index to the Records of the Grand Historian) by Zhang Yan that: ‘xianbei – an auspicious animal found on guoluo belts, the eastern tribal people were fond of wearing them.’ Guoluo belts were leather belts worn by the Tujue tribe; while xianbei was a type of five-clawed tiger in the Mongolian language. The Xianbei people worshipped it, and use it as their tribal name. They also made casts of it to decorate their belts. Archaeologist Wang Guowei (1877-1927) and Japanese historian Shiratori Kurakichi (1865-1942) both adopted this theory that xianbei, xipi and shibi were one and the same, and denote belt hooks of tribal people.
When discussing ‘belt hooks’ as a collecting category, we have to view them from a multi-cultural perspective as works of art that have an unbridled, diverse quality. A Western Han dynasty yellow jade belt hook (formerly in the collection of Shanghai collector Chen Rentao in 1930s and 1940s, and later that of Baroness von Oertzen), estimated at £600,000-800,000, was sold in Christie’s London, 3 November 2020, for the price of £2,902,500 (25,200,000 RMB), making it the most expensive archaic jade belt hook ever sold at auction, and showing the value collectors placed on rare jade belt hooks.
How were belt hooks used? According to scholars, the hook would have been fastened pointing to the left, with the left hand holding the belt and the right hand holding the hook, the leather or silk/textile belt was tied to the hook. In March of 1998, Dr. Yang Chün-Hsiung of Yangdetang Collection donated a set of bronze belt buckle with its original silk belt dating to the Warring States period (the silk was carbon-14 tested by the Rafter Radiocarbon Laboratory in New Zealand to be of the period) to the Taipei Palace Museum, providing researchers with an invaluable physical example of how early belt hooks were used. In later times, belt hooks take on a more ornamental function, and were worn as pendants besides being used for belt fastening, with ever more refined decoration, and became real collector’s items.