A rare celadon jade arc-shaped pendant, huang, Late Eastern Zhou dynasty, ca. 4th/3rd century BC | 東周 青白玉龍紋璜

Eskenazi Ltd., London.

埃斯卡納齊，倫敦

Arc-shaped pendants, huang, such as the present piece were held in great esteem by the nobility of the late Eastern Zhou dynasty (770-256 BC). Such pendants were worn as articles of personal adornment, suspended in pectorals on the front of the body in combination with other ornaments. Such was their popularity that they were also buried with their owners accompanying and adorning them in the afterlife. Some late Eastern Zhou lacquered wood figurines excavated from Chu kingdom tombs show such sets worn over the skirts of long garments, see, for example, Chen Wanxiong, ed., Zhongguo dicheng wenhua daxi. Chu wenhua / Great series on Chinese regional cultures. Chu culture, Hong Kong, 1997, pl. 210; or line drawings in Jessica Rawson, Chinese Jade from the Neolithic to the Qing, The British Museum, London, 1995, p. 263, fig. 1.

A pendant set from the late Western Zhou period (c. 1046-771 BC) was included in the exhibition Art in Quest of Heaven and Truth. A Guide to Chinese Jades Through the Ages, National Palace Museum, Taipei, 2011, p. 81, fig. 5-5-8. According to the Museum, this set represents one of the popular combinations from the mid-Western Zhou to the late Spring and Autumn period (770-476 BC), and the number of huang in a set would have indicated the social status of its owners. Compare also a smaller huang terminating with a pair of dragon heads, but carved with interlocking T-scrolls, sold in our New York rooms, 18th March 2014, lot 149. 

For huang of similar size and design, made of a similarly coloured soft jade with calcified patches, compare examples discovered in the Western Han tomb of Zhao Mo, Emperor Wen (r. 137-122), the King of Nanyue, published in Jades in the Tomb of the King of Nanyue, Guangzhou, 1991, pls. 57, 138 and 149.