A RARE BRONZE AND JADE SPEARHEAD

PROPERTY FROM THE ESTATE OF RENA G. SEGAL

Details

A RARE BRONZE AND JADE SPEARHEAD
SHANG DYNASTY

The conical bronze socket cast in intaglio on two sides with two, sinuous serpent-like bodies cast along their length with detached large scales and reserved on a leiwen ground, the bodies merging at the base of the small serpent head from which the jade blade issues, the blade tapering towards the beveled edges from a raised median ridge carved from dark bluish-green jade now almost completely altered in burial to an opaque buff color extensively suffused with mottling, the bronze shaft with cuprite, ferrous and lapis encrusation (jade blade recut)
6 7/8in. (17.5cm.) long, lucite stand and case

Literature

Minao Hayashi, Studies on Yin and Zhou Bronze Decoration, vol. II, Japan, 1986, p. 112, fig.3-179

Lot Essay

Other spearheads of this conical shape tapering to a serpent's head, but not decorated with the same kind of sinuous double body as on the present example, are in the Winthrop Collection, illustrated by Max Loehr, Ancient Chinese Jades, Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University, 1975, pp. 81-83, pls. 82-85. All of these are inlaid with turquoise, as is the example illustrated by Cheng Dong and Zhong Shao-yi, Zhongguo gudai binqi tuji (Ancient Chinese Weapons: A Collection of Pictures), Jie fangjun chubanshe, 1990, p. 43, fig. 2-103. Compare, also, the socket with two loops and probably once inlaid with turquoise in the Werner Jennings Collection illustrated by Max Loehr, Chinese Bronze Age Weapons, Ann Arbor, Michigan, 1956, pl. XIV, no. 34. All of the aforementioned examples are also fitted with a jade blade, which, although not exactly alike, are all more of a leaf shape, i.e., broader at the base and tapering to a point, not slender like the blade on the present spearhead, leading one to surmise that this blade has been re-cut