Lot 111
111
AN UNUSUAL CALCIFIED DARK OLIVE-GREEN JADE ARCHED PLAQUE

Details
AN UNUSUAL CALCIFIED DARK OLIVE-GREEN JADE ARCHED PLAQUE
EARLY EASTERN ZHOU DYNASTY, SPRING AND AUTUMN PERIOD, CA. 900-700 B.C.

Carved in the form of a highly stylized, tightly arched semi-human or dragon, with a thin, cut-out line indicating the opening of the jaws or separation of a crown and with a series of notches along the edge of the head, incised in fine line on one side with angular scrolls separated by a striated band at the neck and with long parallel lines following the shape of the long, sharply upcurved tail or feet, the reverse plain, pierced with a hole drilled from one side, the dark olive-green stone now mostly altered to an opaque buff color, tail with old reground break--2 5/8in. (6.6cm.) across
Provenance
A.W. Bahr Collection, Weybridge

Lot Essay

The S-shaped scrolls which fill the lower body of this huang-like pendant date the piece to the Spring and Autumn period when this form of decor became popular; see the jade bi, early Spring and Autumn period, in Zhongguo meishu quanji: Yuqi, vol. 9, pls. 96, 102-3. Representational fidelity towards the subject is lost during this period due to the tendency to favor ornamental and texturally varied motifs like tight square scrolls and zoomorphic symbiosis. The general outline of the flat form can be read as either a dragon with sharply upturned tail or may fit into the category of a semi-human in a crouched position wearing a scroll-slit dragon crown and which has been totally abstracted. Generically comparable huang-shaped forms which support this latter hypothesis are represented by Early Western Zhou huang from Tengxian, Shandong, Zhongguo meishu quanji: Yuqi, vol. 9, pl. 84, and by The William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art piece in Kansas City, S. H. Hansford, Chinese Carved Jades, pl. 3

Other similar pendants are in the Pope-Hennessy Collection, illustrated by Una Pope-Hennessey, Early Chinese Jades, New York, 1923, pl. XXI:fig. 1; the Winthrop Collection, Fogg Art Museum, illustrated by Max Loehr, Ancient Chinese Jades, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1975, no. 600; and in the Museum für Ostasiatische Kunst, Cologne, illustrated by Salmony, Carved Jade of Ancient China, Berkeley, California, 1938, pl. XXXIV