Page 44 - Marchant Ninety Jades For 90 Years

十 19. Curved openwork headdress finial, carved with a female immortal seated on the back of a phoenix bird above ruyi-shaped clouds, her

九 hands clasped together and her robes flowing in the wind and wearing a tall bud-form crown, with detailed work to the upright tail

feathers and cross-hatching to the wings, the stone cream and grey with dark honey marking.
跨 2 ⅝ inches, 6.7 cm long.
鳳 Song dynasty, 960-1279.
仙

人 • From the collection of a private English family, Peterborough.
紋 • A similar white jade ornament is illustrated by Zhou Nan-quan in The Complete Collection of Treasures in the Palace Museum,
飾
Jadeware (II), vol. 41, no. 89, p. 102, where the author notes that both the dress and the posture are Buddhist. The same piece

灰 is again illustrated by Zhao Gui Ling in Compendium of Collections in the Palace Museum, Jade, Vol. 5, Tang, Song, Liao, Jin and
玉 Yuan Dynasties, Gu Gong Inventory no. Xin 200644, no. 118, p. 122/3, with full page enlargement; it is also illustrated by Liu

Yang & Edmund Capon in Translucent World, Chinese Jade from the Forbidden City, an exhibition held at the Art Gallery of

宋 New South Wales, Sydney, Australia, 2007, no. 62, p. 114, where the authors note, ‘The subject - a goddess with an extravagant
crown riding a phoenix and supported by a cluster of clouds – may refer to the legend of Xiao Shi and his lover princess Nongyu

(‘enjoying jade’). Both skilled flautists, they ascended to heaven after becoming immortal, and rode on a dragon and a phoenix.

This ornament is the only jade object with this subject matter known from the Song or earlier period.’ It was included by Liu

Yang in his article Translucent World: Representations of Nature in Chinese Jade, Arts of Asia, November/December 2007,

no. 12, p. 76.

• During the Song dynasty, there was increasingly complex interaction between the tradition of elite organised Daoism and local

folk religion. ‘Converted’ local deities were integrated into the Daoist pantheon, increasing the number of deities represented in

popular art’.

• A Tang dynasty peacock headdress finial is illustrated by Angus Forsyth and Brian McElney in Jades from China, The Museum

of East Asian Art, Bath, no. 179, p. 277, where the authors note that from the Tang dynasty, ladies of the court wore similar

headdress ornaments.

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