A RARE STAINED CARVED BONE HARNESS FITTING

Details

A RARE STAINED CARVED BONE HARNESS FITTING
WARRING STATES

One of a pair of a cheek pieces of tusk form, the bone with slightly irregular curve carved its entire length with eight facets and painted in black with a wide central band set between narrow line borders and bands of geometric scrolls, the tip encircled by another band, a pale brown pentimento remaining where the black decoration has worn away, all reserved on a pale green-stained ground, pierced from one side to the other with two channels of rectangular outline now filled with earth
6½in. (16.5cm.) long, box

Lot Essay

Compare a pair of bone cheek pieces of the same shape, from tomb No. 130, Liuligo, Huixian, Henan province, shown in a line drawing along with a bronze snaffle bit, in the exhibition Catalogue, Chinese Art of the Warring States Period, Change and Continuity, 480-222 B.C., Freer Gallery of Art, Washington D.C., 1982, p. 55. A similarly shaped pair decorated with angular C-scrolls was included in the exhibition, Chinese Ivories from the Kwan Collection, Chinese University of Hong Kong, 1990, Catalogue, no. 30. And several others erroneously identified as bow fittings are illustrated by Umehara, Etudes des Bronzes des Royaumes Combattants, Kyoto, 1930, p. XXVIII (3).

A slight twist in this piece suggests that the material may be antler and not bone. In the entry for the Kwan cheek pieces, op. cit., it is noted that antler and horn cheek pieces were already in use in the Western Zhou period