A YELLOW JADE HORNED FIGURE LATE SHANG – WESTERN ZHOU DYNASTY |

seated upright with his arms resting on his knees, the head detailed with slit eyes, a straight nose and a small mouth, surmounted by a pair of curved horns, the stone of a yellowish green tone

Robert P. Youngman, The Youngman Collection of Chinese Jades from Neolithic to Qing, Chicago, 2008, pl. 168.

  Early jade carvings of figural form are extremely rare. Only a small number of Shang dynasty examples has been found, including a larger figure unearthed from the tomb of Fu Hao, with hornlike extensions on the head, illustrated in Wen Fong (ed.), The Great Bronze Age of China, New York, 1980, cat. no. 37. The current horned figure is also closely related to a Shang jade figure in Harvard Art Museum, illustrated in Max Loehr and Louisa G. Fitzgerald Huber, Ancient Chinese Jades from the Grenville L. Winthrop Collection in the Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University, Cambridge, 1975, cat. no. 119. but the stylised treatment of the breasts on the Winthrop figure clearly denote it as a female figure. See also two figures in the collection of the British Museum, stylistically similar and closely comparable in the texture and colour of the stone, illustrated in the collection of the British Museum, published in Jessica Rawson, Chinese Jade from the Neolithic to the Qing, London, 1995, p. 282, fig.1, attributed to the Western Zhou dynasty.