1943.50.539: Ornate Jade Ring-Disk
Ritual ImplementsA jade disk that has been cut into a thin ring. It is dark brown in color with some pale yellow along the center-left. It is shown flat on a grey background. It has been engraved with swirling lines that make a pattern throughout the piece. The pattern has fine, circle and lines details.
Gallery Text
In the Zhou dynasty the number of jades in burial sites increased significantly, as multiple plaques and beads were sewn or strung together and draped over the face and body of the deceased. Jades in the forms of figures and animals became increasingly realistic, and surface patterns became more complex and highly decorative.
Identification and Creation
- Object Number
- 1943.50.539
- Title
- Ornate Jade Ring-Disk
- Classification
- Ritual Implements
- Work Type
- disk
- Date
- 4th-3rd century BCE
- Places
- Creation Place: East Asia, China
- Period
- Zhou dynasty, Warring States period, 475-221 BCE
- Culture
- Chinese
- Persistent Link
- https://hvrd.art/o/204854
Location
- Location
-
Level 1, Room 1740, Early Chinese Art, Arts of Ancient China from the Neolithic to the Bronze Age
View this object's location on our interactive map
Physical Descriptions
- Medium
- Tortoise-shell colored nephrite with areas of incipient calcification
- Dimensions
-
Diam. 14.2 x Thickness 0.3 cm (5 9/16 x 1/8 in.)
Weight 52 g
Provenance
- Recorded Ownership History
- Grenville L. Winthrop, New York (by 1943), bequest; to Fogg Art Museum, 1943.
Published Text
- Catalogue
- Ancient Chinese Jades from the Grenville L. Winthrop Collection in the Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University
- Authors
- Max Loehr and Louisa G. Fitzgerald Huber
- Publisher
- Fogg Art Museum (Cambridge, MA, 1975)
Catalogue entry no. 401 by Max Loehr:
401 Ornate Ring-Disk
Jade of tortoise-shell color, with areas of incipient calcification. The narrow surface of this ring-disk is decorated with a deeply carved and finely incised pattern, the center of which is occupied by a kind of t’ao-t’ieh mask. Along the outer edge, to either side of the bands issuing from the mask, are two animal heads facing in a clockwise direction. Strongly modeled and overlapping bands and spirals, symmetrically arranged on either side of the mask, fill the rest of the disk. The reverse side is plain. Beveled inner and outer edges. The disk is broken in two places and repaired with two small metal pins fitted into holes drilled into the jade on either side of the breaks. Later Eastern Chou.
Acquisition and Rights
- Credit Line
- Harvard Art Museums/Arthur M. Sackler Museum, Bequest of Grenville L. Winthrop
- Accession Year
- 1943
- Object Number
- 1943.50.539
- Division
- Asian and Mediterranean Art
- Contact
- am_asianmediterranean@harvard.edu
- Permissions
-
THIS WORK MAY NOT BE LENT BY THE TERMS OF ITS ACQUISITION TO THE HARVARD ART MUSEUMS.
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Publication History
- Dorothy W. Gillerman, ed., Grenville L. Winthrop: Retrospective for a Collector, exh. cat., Fogg Art Museum (Cambridge, 1969), no. 031, pp. 26-27
- Max Loehr and Louisa G. Fitzgerald Huber, Ancient Chinese Jades from the Grenville L. Winthrop Collection in the Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University (Cambridge, MA, Fogg Art Museum, 1975)., cat. no. 401, pp. 272-273
- Jenny So, Early Chinese Jades in the Harvard Art Museums (Cambridge, MA, 2019), pp. 224-25, cat. 28A
Exhibition History
- 32Q: 1740 Early China I, Harvard Art Museums, 11/16/2014 - 01/01/2050
Subjects and Contexts
- Google Art Project
Verification Level
This record has been reviewed by the curatorial staff but may be incomplete. Our records are frequently revised and enhanced. For more information please contact the Division of Asian and Mediterranean Art at am_asianmediterranean@harvard.edu