Page 49 - September 20 2021 Chinese Works of Art Bonhams NYC

PROPERTY FROM THE ESTATE OF ROBERT P. YOUNGMAN
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AN ELEGANT SEMI-TRANSLUCENT OLIVE-GREEN NEPHRITE For a near identical engraved green jade disc, bi, see J. J Lally & Co.
JADE DISC, BI Oriental Art, Archaic Chinese Bronzes, Jades and Works of Art, New
Western Han dynasty York, 1994, no. 42. The Lally example is just slightly smaller than
Finely carved on both sides with an inner band of facetted bosses in ours. The catalogue entry notes that such discs as these have been
a network of regular narrow grooves under a wide band of four taotie excavated from the famous royal Han tombs of Prince Liu Sheng
masks with long horns and and interlocking snake-like bodies, the two and his consort Dou Wan at Mancheng, Hebei province, dated to
friezes separated by a narrow twisted rope band repeated next to the the second century BCE. A comparison is drawn with two jade bi
small central aperture, the stone a mottled dark green color. with similar engraved taotie design around the outer edge and similar
9 1/8in (23.1cm) diameter working of the spirals illustrated in Mancheng Han mu fajue baoao
(Report on the excavation of the Han tombs at Mancheng), Vol. II, pl.
$15,000 - 20,000 96 and 209.

西漢 青玉璧 Other bi discs of this type are illustrated by Max Loehr and Louisa G.
Fitzgerald Huber, Ancient Chinese Jades from the Grenville L. Winthrop
Collection in the Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University, 1975, no’s.
533 and 534; and Rene-Yvon Lefebvre, Chinese Jades in the Avery
Brundage Collection, San Francisco, 1970, pl. XXI.

See a comparable disc sold at Christie’s New York, 16 March, 2007,
lot 1063, and another pale green jade disc published by J.J. Lally &
Co., New York, Ancient Chinese Jade, March 2018, no. 131.

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