Description:
AN OPENWORK JADE WITH DRAGON AND PHOENIX DESIGN
China, Western Han dynasty, 2nd-1st century BC. This masterfully carved openwork jade depicting creatures of an imaginary world offers a vivid example of how plastic and fluent the decorative motifs carved on jades had become during the Han period, as they almost appear painted rather than painstakingly engraved into the stone.
Provenance: From a European private collection.
Published: 4000 Years of Chinese Archaic Jades, The Development of the Jade-Carving Tradition from the Neolithic to the Han Dynasty, by Professor Filippo Salviati, Edition Zacke, Vienna 2017, lot 303.
Condition: Fine condition with natural flaws and fissures to stone, some erosion, old wear, traces of use and minor losses to edges.
Weight: 144 grams
Dimensions: Width 13.1 cm
A dragon and a phoenix, surrounded by cloud-like scrolls, are carved in openwork into a slab of white jade, with some creamy areas and black markings. The phoenix, with a long tail enriched by scrolls and volutes, stands on one side of the plaque, while the feline-like body of the dragon occupies the rest of the space. The crested heads of the two mythical animals are close and stare at each other. Both their mouths are open and the sinuous and bifurcated tail of the dragon is marked by parallel, slightly twisted grooves. The whole jade is embellished with details engraved into the stone, such as the double-incised lines marking the contour of the cloud-like motifs on top of the plaque.
Similar scrolls were often used in Han art to render the vaporous world inhabited by fantastic creatures and immortals: A good example is offered by the scrolls which decorate the bottom part of a famous incense burner in inlaid bronze, discovered in the 2nd century BC tomb of Prince Liu Sheng (Mancheng, Hebei). A plaque in openwork in the Samuel and Myrna Myers collection has a similar design, but the dragon and the phoenix share the same body and have long crests with volutes, while the cloud-like pattern stems out of the dragon′s mouth (reproduced in Salviati 2016, number 149). In western museums, there are two other similar jades depicting animals and vaporlike scrolls: One in the Musée Guimet, Paris, carved with the image of a walking tiger in profile resting on a base made of abstract cloud scrolls (Hansford 1968, figure 60b) and a second one in the Freer/Sackler Galleries, Washington, D.C. (accession number S1987.683).
鏤空雕龍鳳把件
中國, 西漢,公元前二到一世紀。玉把件上精雕細琢描繪了一個神話動物,説明漢代玉器雕刻工藝已經非常出色。
來源:歐洲私人收藏
出版: 4000 Years of Chinese Archaic Jades, The Development of the Jade-Carving Tradition from the Neolithic to the Han Dynasty, by Professor Filippo Salviati, Edition Zacke, Vienna 2017, lot 303.
品相:良好品相,天然瑕疵和肌理,一些腐蝕和舊使用。邊沿出有侵蝕和邊緣処磕損。
重量:144 克
尺寸:寬13.1 厘米