A WHITE JADE WRIST-REST

Details

A WHITE JADE WRIST-REST
QING DYNASTY, 17TH/18TH CENTURY

Of rectangular form with gently undulating ends, carved in imitation of a flattened bamboo stalk, finely detailed in low relief with a tall bamboo shoot running up the left side, its leafy branches extending across either side of a five-character inscription,cui zhu zhang long sun, the reverse incised with a further lengthy inscription signed Zi Ang and with a seal reading song xue, the translucent stone of an even white tone
5 3/8 in. (13.6 cm.) long

Literature

Robert Kleiner, Chinese Jades from the Collection of Alan and Simone Hartman, Hong Kong, 1996, no. 97

Exhibited

Christie's New York, 13-26 March 2001
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, August 2003 - December 2004

Lot Essay

A number of jade scholar's objects from the early Qing dynasty inscribed with the names Zi Ang and Xue Song have been published. Compare a white jade wrist-rest in the Palace Museum, Beijing, illustrated in The Complete Treasures of the Palace Museum - Jadeware (III), Hong Kong 1995, p. 193, no. 158. A spinach green jade wrist-rest in the Victoria and Albert Museum illustrated by M. Wilson, Chinese Jades, London, 2004, pp. 64-65, pl. 67-68 also bears the same signature and seal. The author explains that the names Zi Ang and Song Xue (Snowy Pine Studio) were aliases of the great calligrapher and painter Zhao Mengfu (1254-1322) and the prevalence of these inscriptions on early Qing jades seems to indicate that the artist was held in particularly high regard at the time.

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