This small carving is remarkable for both the quality of the carving and the purity of the stone. The buffalo is naturalistically rendered with a great deal of attention paid to the carving of the legs and hoofs. Another small jade depicting a single boy climbing on the back of a buffalo is illustrated in Selected Treasures of Chinese Art, Catalogue, no. 219. Although the stone used in the latter is greenish-brown the style of carving and subject matter are closely related.

In the catalogue entry for an earlier carving of a boy and buffalo, Chinese Jades from Han to Ch'ing, Catalogue, no. 47, dated to the Yuan dynasty, Watt writes that "Boys riding on ch'ing-pai porcelain water-droppers of the Yuan period often hold ears of rice, ho, in their hands, a pun for ho meaning harmony." In the entry for no. 46 he states that the "subject of a boy on a buffalo made its first appearance in the art of the Southern Sung period". While Rawson, Chinese Jade p. 371, further states that apart from appearing in paintings buffaloes and their boy minders can be found in ceramics and bronzes of the Yuan dynasty and the imagery also appeared in jade carvings and continued throughout the Yuan, Ming and Qing.