A MOTTLED GREENISH-BROWN JADE PLAQUE

Details
A MOTTLED GREENISH-BROWN JADE PLAQUE
WESTERN ZHOU DYNASTY

The flat plaque of trapezoidal form, decorated on one side with a single fenghuang standing in profile, with large, hooked beak, curled crest and long tail feathers arched over the bird's back and head and beneath its body, with a pair of conjoined fenghuang with backward-turned heads on the reverse, all executed in grooved lines of varying width, a narrow tab projecting from the lower edge on one side pierced with twelve small, biconical holes and a slight projecting ridge on the reverse of the upper edge pierced with six holes which exit in the side of the plaque just below, the green and brown mottled stone extensively altered in burial to a dark buff color on one side, chips--2¼in. (5.7cm.) across
Provenance
A.W. Bahr Collection, Weybridge

Lot Essay

A trapezoidal plaque with fenghuang has been excavated from Puducun, Changan, Shaanxi, Kaogu xuebao, 1957.1, p. 84, pl. VI:4; and again in Jade Carvings in Chinese Archaeology, vol. 1, Hong Kong, 1987, pl. XXVII:2AB. The motifs of fenghuang on the front and reverse of this piece are identical to the high quality of the Sackler carving. Like the latter, the birds on front and reverse faces are incised with double lines. The Puducun plaque does not carry biconical holes. In shape and decor the two, Puducun and Sackler pieces, are similar. Another plaque of this shape and size decorated with back-to-back fenghuang, but in which the bodies have been reduced to circular scroll motifs, the legs and claws eliminated, was excavated at Fengchucun, Qishan County, Shaanxi, Wenwu, 1979:10, p. 34, fig. 8

Compare, also, the similar plaque from the Collection C.T. Loo, Paris, illustrated by Salmony, Carved Jade of Ancient China, Berkeley, California, 1938, pl. XXV:7, which is also carved with a fenghuang in profile and has holes pierced through the upper and lower edges. Both the present plaque and the C.T. Loo example appear to be related to another trapezoidal plaque pierced with 'ox-nose' loop holes along the upper and lower edges but with different decoration, included in the exhibition, Chinese Archaic Jades from the Kwan Collection, The Art Gallery, University of Hong Kong, 1994, Catalogue no. 126, where Yang Boda illustrates a line drawing of a similar ornament hung with pendent beads excavated from a Western Zhou burial at Pingdingshan in Henan Province, where it was found at chest level and surmised to be part of a pectoral ornament