An inscribed white jade 'horse' pendant, Qing dynasty, Qianlong period

Private Collection, acquired in Hong Kong, 1991.

Ninety Jades for 90 Years, Marchant, London, November 2015, cat. no. 38.

Finely carved with an elysian composition and accompanying verse in pure white jade, the present pendant shares many features with the famed eighteenth century Suzhou School of hardstone carving and, in particular, the fabled workshop of Lu Zigang. 

Compare a related pendant of this form decorated with a standing lady, also bearing an inscription, from the collection of Victor Shaw, illustrated in Chinese Jades from Han to Ch’ing, Asia House Gallery, New York, 1980, cat. no. 219; another of this form, with a lady weaving beside a window and children playing in an exterior garden, again with a relief inscription, illustrated in Xue Guisheng, Zhongguo yuqi shangjian [An appreciation and examination of Chinese jades], Shanghai, 2000, pl. 274; and a further pendant, carved with scholar Wang Xizhi pointing at two geese and the reverse with Zhang Liang, bearing a Zigang seal mark, included by Marchant in their 70th Anniversary Exhibition of Post-Archaic Chinese Jades, London, 1995, cat. no. 64.