A CELADON JADE 'BIRD-MAN' FINIAL LIAO DYNASTY |

worked in the form of an anthropomorphic figure standing on a lotus blossom supported by oval leaves with the right hand held in abhaya mudra and the left in vitarka mudra, the figure with a birdlike body and flanked on the sides with finely incised wings and depicted with a tail curving downward, further portrayed adorned in a cap, crown and fluttering scarves, the stone of a pale celadon-beige colour with russet patches, pierced through with an aperture

Anunt Hengtrakul, New York.

Robert P. Youngman, The Youngman Collection of Chinese Jades from Neolithic to Qing, Chicago, 2008, pl. 176.

A closely related image of a celestial being, identified as a Zoroastrian priest, discovered on a 6th century sarcophagus excavated from the tomb of Yu Hong in Shanxi province, is illustrated in James Watt, China. Dawn of a Golden Age 200-750 A.D., the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 2004, cat. no. 175. See also a bird-man finial carved in jade and dated to the Song dynasty in the collection of the Tianjin Museum, illustrated in Tianjin shi bowuguan cang yu, Beijing, 1993, pl. 165.