A SILVER 'MAKARA' PENDANT SONG - YUAN DYNASTY |

formed from two teardrop-shaped sheets of silver joined back-to-back, each sheet worked in repoussé with a pair of makara diving towards one another in pursuit of a 'flaming pearl' at the center of the composition, each makara with an animated dragon face characterized by a long upturned snout, beady eyes, and short horns, the fish-form body with outstretched fins and a long scaly torso sweeping upward and flicking the broadly fanning tail, traces of gilt on one side, the pointed tip of the pendant pierced

The form of the pendant and the workmanship of the metal sides bear a strong correlation to a gold openwork 'duck and lotus' pendant excavated from a tomb in Wu County, Jiangsu province, and illustrated in Zhou Fan and Kao Cunming, Zhongguo lidai funü zhuangshi [Decorative Clothing and Accessories of Chinese Women throughout History], Hong Kong, 1988, pl. 398. The style of the makaras, themselves, closely resemble the makaras woven into a 13th century lampa textile in the collection of the Cleveland Museum of Art, included in the exhibition The World of Khubilai Khan: Chinese art in the Yuan Dynasty, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 2010, cat. no. 41.