Lot Essay
The present tube tapers gently from the top to bottom, and is carved on one side in relief with a face complete with human facial features.
He is shown wearing a woven headdress and earrings.
Carvings of human faces form an important category among jades from the Shijiahe Culture, but are more often represented on flat rectangular surfaces. Tubular carvings with human faces are significnately rarer.
Compare with a similar tubular jade carving of a human face discovered at the Xiaojia Roof excavation site, Hubei Province, now in Jingzhou Museum and illustrated in Jade Objects of the Shijiahe Culture, Beiijng, 2008, p. 28, no. 3 (fig. 1).
(Text by Wang Mingda)
He is shown wearing a woven headdress and earrings.
Carvings of human faces form an important category among jades from the Shijiahe Culture, but are more often represented on flat rectangular surfaces. Tubular carvings with human faces are significnately rarer.
Compare with a similar tubular jade carving of a human face discovered at the Xiaojia Roof excavation site, Hubei Province, now in Jingzhou Museum and illustrated in Jade Objects of the Shijiahe Culture, Beiijng, 2008, p. 28, no. 3 (fig. 1).
(Text by Wang Mingda)