A FINE JADE TIGER PENDANT

Estimated Value:

1.500 € - 2.500 €

Schätzpreis:

1.500 €

Description:

China, probably late Shang dynasty
L. 9,2 cm
Honey colored to dark brown, in places translucent jade with larger calcifications. This tiger is depicted in flat ",Huang" shape, the details were engraved with relatively wide double lines, the eyes are executed by two closely concentric circles with indicated palpebral fissure. The mouth and tail are differentiated by larger, irregularly shaped perforations. Wood stand.
Important Austrian private collection, acquired in the 1980s from an old Austrian private collection
Publ. Zeileis, "Selected Chinese Jade from Seven Millennia," 1994, no. 95, p. 116
The tiger, called hu or laohu in Chinese, is among the most recognizable of the world’s charismatic megafauna. Originating in China and northern Central Asia, the tiger was known to the earliest Chinese, who likely feared, admired, and respected it for its strength, ferocity, and regal bearing. Though its precise symbolism in Shang times (c. 1600-c. 1046 BC) remains unknown, the tiger doubtless played a totemic, tutelary, or talismanic role. By the Western Han period (206 BC-AD 9)-a thousand years after this pendant was made-the tiger was regarded as the “king of the hundred beasts”, or baishou zhi wang, due its power and ferocity and especially to the markings on its forehead which typically resemble the character wang , or “king”. In addition, not only did the tiger figure among the twelve animals of the Chinese zodiac, but it gained a place among the auspicious animals that symbolize the four cardinal directions-the white tiger, or baihu, of the west, the azure dragon of the east, the vermillion bird of the south, and the black tortoise of the north
Very few tiny chips

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