A RARE YELLOW JADE 'MYTHICAL BEAST' HUANG WESTERN ZHOU DYNASTY | 西周 黃玉獸紋璜

It is rare to find a yellow jade huang of this quality, skilfully worked in the form of a stylised mythical beast, with joints and nose expressed with squared spirals. The openwork between the goatee beard and front paws is 'string cut', and the sliced thinness appears to be string cut as well. The colour is a beautiful tone of light yellow and highly translucent. The surface pitting and oxidation of nose area attests to and is in keeping with the other characteristics of great age.

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, and an example from the collection of Robert Youngman, sold in these rooms, 3rd April 2019, lot 3404.