HOTUNG | 何東 The Personal Collection of the late Sir Joseph Hotung: Part 1 | Day

HOTUNG | 何東 The Personal Collection of the late Sir Joseph Hotung: Part 1 | Day

View full screen - View 1 of Lot 102. A small yellow jade figure of a rabbit, Song dynasty or earlier | 宋或以前 黃玉臥兔.

A small yellow jade figure of a rabbit, Song dynasty or earlier | 宋或以前 黃玉臥兔

Auction Closed

October 9, 07:30 AM GMT

Estimate

40,000 - 60,000 HKD

Lot Details

Description

A small yellow jade figure of a rabbit,

Song dynasty or earlier

宋或以前 黃玉臥兔


modelled as a dainty crouching rabbit with subtly incised eyes, its muzzle framed by the front paws and the long ears swept backwards, the hind legs tucked under the muscular haunches, vertically perforated from behind the ears through to the flat underside, the stone of a honey-yellow colour with russet-brown veining


3.4 cm

Chung Wah Pui, Hong Kong, 6th July 1993.


鍾華培,香港,1993年7月6日

Jessica Rawson, Chinese Jade from the Neolithic to the Qing, London, 1995, pl. 26:9.

Chinese Jade Animals, Hong Kong, 1996, cat. no. 69.


羅森,《Chinese Jade from the Neolithic to the Qing》,倫敦,1995年,圖版26:9

《中國肖生玉雕》,香港,1996年,編號69

British Museum, London, on loan, 1995.

Chinese Jade Animals, Hong Kong Museum of Art, Hong Kong, 1996.


大英博物館,倫敦,借展,1995年

《中國肖生玉雕》,香港藝術館,香港,1996年

Rabbit-form ornaments enjoyed considerable popularity in ancient China, presumably because of the mythological association with the elixir of immortality on the moon. Jessica Rawson believes the present jade rabbit may pre-date the Song period, as it shares some characteristics with examples attributed to the Tang dynasty (ibid., p. 365, figs 1-3).


For comparable Song examples, see a small figure of a rabbit crouching on a pedestal in the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, accession no. S2012.9.2774; and an excavated white jade paperweight of a rabbit in a similar pose, published in 'Zhejiang Quzhou shi Nansong mu chutu qiwu [Artifacts unearthed from the Southern Song in Quzhou City, Zhejiang Province]', Archaeology, 1983, no. 11, pp. 1004-18, pl. 6, no. 4.