Cicada, fish, various birds, bear, elephant, deer, dragons, tigers and rams are well-known jade types in Shang and Western Zhou excavated finds. The subject here of praying mantis, is rare. Excavated praying mantises are known by one example from Fu Hao's tomb at Anyang. See Yinxu Fu Hao mu, Beijing, fig. 85:7, p. 165; and pl. 139:1. The latter is decorated with typial Shang double-line decor and is worked in the round. The similarity between the two examples is in the formal proportions that identify this insect and the Chinese taste for representing insects and animals in their most characteristic disposition. The flat, worked style of the present lot suggests that it dates to the Western Zhou period when jades were oftentimes characterized by a more naturalistic and abstractly simplified shape

Compare, also, the example included in the C. T. Loo exhibition, Chinese Archaic Jades, Norton Gallery of Art, West Palm Beach, Florida, January 20-March 1, 1950, Catalogue, pl. XXVII; and another of slightly rounder form in the Winthrop Collection illustrated by Loehr, Ancient Chinese Jades, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1975, no. 166