LATE WARRING STATES PERIOD, 3RD CENTURY BC

These pendants are unusual not only for their large size, but also in that they are cut from the same boulder. By the 4th century BC, dragon pendants of this S-shape type were popular and are widely represented in jades found in tombs from the Zhongshan state at Pingshan Xian in Hebei province. A dragon pendant of this type from the tombs of the kings of the state of Zhongshan, dated to the 4th century BC is illustrated in Zhongguo yuqi quanji, vol. 3, Hebei, 1993, p. 134, no. 215. Another somewhat later example found in 1957 in Henan province, and dated to the mid-Warring States period, is also illustrated, p. 161, no. 252. Like the Falk pendants it is carved from dark green jade and is of S-shape in profile. Another similar, but smaller, pair in the collection of the British Museum was included in the exhibition, Chinese Jade throughout the ages, London, Victoria and Albert Museum, 1975, no. 118, dated 4th-3rd century BC; and two, also of smaller size, but of the same profile, in the Edward and Louise B. Sonnenschein Collection, are illustrated by A. Salmony, Archaic Chinese Jades, the Art Institute of Chicago, 1952, pl. LXXIII (3 and 4). For a related dragon pendant of large size (10 3⁄8 in. long), but of a more compressed profile, see the example included in the exhibition, Chinese Art of the Warring States Period, Change and Continuity, 480-222 BC, Washington, DC, Freer Gallery of Art, 1982, p. 154, no. 101.