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Lot Essay
Compare with a similar Hongshan jade toothed ornament of celadon tone (19.6 cm.) from the Yangdetang Collection, which is also carved with five pairs of 'teeth', sold at Christie's Hong Kong, Chinese Archaic Jades from The Yangdetang Collection, 29 November 2017, lot 2704 (fig.1).
The present ornament was in the collection of Michael von Braun Nagel (1941–2021), a German‑born international banker and lifelong connoisseur of art and culture whose career and travels spanned Europe, North America, the Middle East and Asia. Educated at Yale University (B.A. 1964), with further business studies at INSEAD and Columbia, he settled in London, which remained his principal base while he held senior positions in global financial institutions and maintained close ties with leading dealers, auction houses and collectors. He was descended from the von Braun family, an old Prussian noble lineage with roots in Königsberg, now Kaliningrad, and his family received its title and ennoblement from the Czar of Russia. He gifted this lot, together with other treasured objects, to a friend, where it has remained within the family ever since.
The present ornament was in the collection of Michael von Braun Nagel (1941–2021), a German‑born international banker and lifelong connoisseur of art and culture whose career and travels spanned Europe, North America, the Middle East and Asia. Educated at Yale University (B.A. 1964), with further business studies at INSEAD and Columbia, he settled in London, which remained his principal base while he held senior positions in global financial institutions and maintained close ties with leading dealers, auction houses and collectors. He was descended from the von Braun family, an old Prussian noble lineage with roots in Königsberg, now Kaliningrad, and his family received its title and ennoblement from the Czar of Russia. He gifted this lot, together with other treasured objects, to a friend, where it has remained within the family ever since.