A Large White Jade Mountain Qing Dynasty, 18th Century

finely carved from a large celadon-white jade boulder as an upright mountainous landscape detailed with jagged rockwork and arboured with verdant trees, a river streaming through the scene below a gnarled pine tree, the reverse carved with lingzhi-shaped clouds and further pines emerging from the crevices, the translucent stone of an even celadon-white colour mottled with faint russet inclusions, wood stand

Gerard Hawthorn, London, ca. 2000.

This carving is a fine example of a yushan (jade mountain), where the jade boulder has been elaborately carved to depict a miniature landscape with rugged mountains, home to Immortals and reclusive scholars. These mountains, which adorned scholar’s tables, often featured irregular forms that were carved with paths, waterfalls, pine trees and vegetation, and were generally inhabited by figures and animals. Boulder mountains also reflect the jade carver’s skill in their ability to carve elaborate and lively tableaux within the confines of the boulder, keeping the silhouette intact while artistically manipulating the natural imperfections of the stone.

A larger carving of similar form, with one side similarly decorated with a mountain pass and the other side with the sixteen Lohan, in the De An Tang collection, was included in the exhibition A Romance with Jade, Palace Museum, Beijing, 2004, cat. no. 42; another, depicting on one side a pine tree against a deserted landscape, from the estate of Mr and Mrs Oliver Smalley, was sold in our New York rooms, 28th/29th September 1989, lot 474; and a smaller carving of this type was exhibited in The Refined Taste of the Emperor. Special Exhibition of Archaic and Pictorial Jade of the Ch’ing Court, National Palace Museum, Taipei, 1997, cat. no. 38. See also a boulder carving decorated with two horses, illustrated in Geoffrey Wills, Jade of the East, New York, 1972, pl. 59; and another depicting pairs of birds flying around a prunus tree, sold at Christie’s New York, 22nd September 1987, lot 276.

This carving is full of auspicious symbolism; the crane (he) and the pine (song) are both symbols of longevity and immortality, and when depicted together they form the rebus ‘may you enjoy a life as long as the pine and crane’ (songhe changchun). The crane also symbolises rank, and flying cranes are believed to represent a rise in rank, which made it an appropriate theme for a scholar’s object.