PROBABLY JINCUN, HENAN PROVINCE, WARRING STATES PERIOD (475-221 BC)

Details

A VERY FINE AND RARE WHITE AND BROWN JADE 'DRAGON' PENDANT, XI
PROBABLY JINCUN, HENAN PROVINCE, WARRING STATES PERIOD (475-221 BC)
The flat plaque cut out in the undulating shape of a rearing dragon with arched body and long tapering tail, its leg stretching back as if ready to pounce, its features finely grooved and delineated, the highly polished stone of semi-translucent white tone with small areas of dark brown at the edges and some minor streaking, drilled at the back of the eye with a hole for suspension
4 3/8 in. (11 cm.) long, fitted box

Provenance

Baron and Baroness von Oertzen Collection

Literature

S. Howard Hansford, Jade - Essence of Hills and Streams, Johannesburg, 1969, no. B39, p. 83

Special notice

VAT rate of 5% is payable on hammer price and at 15% on the buyer's premium

Lot Essay

This pendant has a highly polished surface and is made of the best quality white jade. Its design is closely related to a Late Eastern Zhou phoenix-shaped pendant now in the Palace Museum, Beijing (fig. 1). The current piece could have belonged to the same group of high quality jades excavated from the fouth to third century B.C. tombs at Jincun, near Luoyang, which are thought to have been those of the Zhou royal family. Some of these are now in the Freer Gallery of Art, Washington, DC, such as the pendants illustrated by Lawton in Chinese Art of the Warring States Period, Freer Gallery of Art, Washington DC, 1982, nos. 80-83, pp. 137-139. The silk brocade box accompanying the present pendant indicates that it was excavated in Shouzhou, Anhui province. It is interesting to note that nos. 81 and 83 of the Freer examples were also traditionally said to have been found at Shouzhou.

Compare also a dragon-shaped pendant from the Western Han period excavated from the Tomb of the King of Nanyue (fig. 2).

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