Sotheby's. The Robert Youngman Collection of Chinese Jade II, Hong Kong, 03 Apr 2019
A yellow jade pendant, Huang, Western Zhou dynasty (1046-771 BCE)
Lot 3404. A yellow jade pendant, Huang, Western Zhou dynasty (1046-771 BCE); 10.9 cm, 4 1/4 in. Estimate 300,000 — 500,000 HKD. Lot sold 1,125,000 HKD (144,911 USD). Courtesy Sotheby's.
the thin arc-shaped pendant superbly worked with flaring ends, each side depicted in low relief with intertwining dragons and outlined with double-line incisions, each horned mythical beast portrayed with slanting eyes and an open mouth baring its fangs, the sinuous bodies rendered in undulating angular scrollwork and incised with echoing scrolls and hooks, the stone of a yellowish-green colour mottled with light brown inclusions.
Provenance: J.J. Lally & Co., New York.
Exhibited: J.J. Lally & Co., Ancient China, Jades, Bronzes & Ceramics, New York, 1999, no. 12.
Literature: Robert P. Youngman, The Youngman Collection of Chinese Jades from Neolithic to Qing, Chicago, 2008, pl. 53.
Note: A closely related jade huang, decorated with similarly carved twin beasts with entwined tails, excavated in 1982 from a Western Zhou site at Tengxian, Shandong, is illustrated in Zhongguo Yuqi Quanji [Complete collection of Chinese jades], vol. 2: Shang/Western Zhou, Shijiazhuang, 2005, p. 205, no. 287, together with another example in the collection of the Palace Museum, Beijing, illustrated op. cit., p. 209, no. 292. See also another example in the Joseph Hotung Collection, illustrated in Jessica Rawson, Chinese Jade from the Neolithic to the Qing, London, 1995, p. 241, no. 14:4.