Catalogue entry no. 456 by Max Loehr:
456 Chape
Light gray, brown, and dark brown translucent jade with a glistening surface. This surprisingly heavy piece has a trapezoidal outline with a symmetrical extrusion at the lower end. Its upper end is planar and smooth; it has a hole in the middle flanked by two small oblique perforations which connect with the one in the middle. The two main surfaces are decorated with vigorously moving animal figures in relief: a large and a small feline on one side, and a curled and twisted quadruped on the other side. The heads of two of the animals are seen en face , more or less, with a curious effect of foreshortening achieved through their unequally large eyes. In all of these animals the relief varies in accordance with the natural unevenness of the raw piece. The highly polished lateral edges, too, are of different widths; except for two shallow rectangular notches they are plain. Late Eastern Chou or Western Han.
The chape compares stylistically with the scabbard buckle, No. 457, so closely as to suggest that both items belonged with the same sword. Their jade material, however, though similar in character, differs in color.
