Sheath with Bird and Feline or Dragon, Warring States period to early Western Han dynasty, 3rd/2nd century B.C. Jade, 10.6 × 5.7 × 0.5 cm. Art Institute of Chicago, Through prior gifts of Mrs. Chauncey B. Borland, Lucy Maud Buckingham Collection, Emily Crane Chadbourne, Mary Hooker Dole, Edith B. Farnsworth, Mrs. Mary A. B. MacKenzie, Mr. and Mrs. Chauncey B. McCormick, Fowler McCormick, Mrs. Gordon Palmer, Grace Brown Palmer, Chester D. Tripp, Russell Tyson, H. R. Warner, Joseph Winterbotham, Mr. and Mrs. Edward Ziff, 1987.141.

This openwork scabbard, created to hold a small dagger, represents the zenith of early Chinese jade craft. Such scabbards were unknown earlier in China, so this might be a copy of a sheath made of another material imported from Central or Western Asia. A phoenix-like bird on the left with a gaping beak and tall crest is balanced on the right by a dragon with a hooked mouth. The fluid contours and surface modeling—the overlapping of the dragon’s hind leg and tail, for instance— represent a new style that emerged in the third century BCE. Although steel tools were in use by this time, jade is harder than some steel, so this would have been laboriously worked by grinding with grit or engraved using a sharpened stone of even harder material.