A VERY RARE JADE AND TURQUOISE-INLAID BRONZE GE-HALBERD BLADE

LATE SHANG DYNASTY, ANYANG PHASE, CIRCA 1300-1100 BC

Details

A VERY RARE JADE AND TURQUOISE-INLAID BRONZE GE-HALBERD BLADE
LATE SHANG DYNASTY, ANYANG PHASE, CIRCA 1300-1100 BC
The jade blade now altered to an opaque dark buff and olive-brown color with median ridge on both sides and slightly beveled edges issuing from the slender hafting bar of the bronze handle, the plain tang pierced with a hole below the hilt cast in the shape of a bird's head with large hooked beak, bifurcated crest and long curled feather on the back of the neck, all inlaid in turquoise tesserae
12 3/8 in. (31.3 cm.) long

Provenance

C.T. Loo & Co., New York.
Frank Caro, New York, 1964.

Exhibited

An Exhibition of Chinese Archaic Jades, C.T. Loo, Inc. at Norton Gallery of Art, West Palm Beach, Florida, 20 January - 1 March 1950, pl. II, no. 2.
4000 Years of Chinese Art, Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, Connecticut, November 1958, no. 20.

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Lot Essay

Similar ge-halberd blades were excavated from late Shang dynasty tombs at Anyang, as evidenced by the quite similar example excavated from the tomb of the Shang queen, Fu Hao, consort of king Wu Ding, at Anyang, Henan province, illustrated in Yinxu Yuqi (The Jades from Yinxu), Beijing, 1982, pl. 17. Unlike the present example the jade blade of the Fuhao ge fits into a bronze socket inlaid in turquoise with a taotie mask set below the hafting bar. This is also true of a similar ge in the Winthrop Collection illustrated by M. Loehr, Ancient Chinese Jades, Cambridge, 1975, p. 80, no. 81, as well as another in the Minneapolis Institute of Arts illustrated in Chinese Jades: Archaic and Modern, Rutland, Vermont/Tokyo, 1977, p. 53, no. 16.

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