Page 90 - Sothebys Important Chinese Art 09/13/17

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PROPERTY FROM THE COLLECTION OF DR. PETER M. Discs feature prominently among jade artefacts recovered
GREINER from sites of the Neolithic period to Han dynasty. Among
them, notched discs form a small but distinctive group.
AN EXCEPTIONALLY LARGE JADE NOTCHED De ned by the deep indentations that divide the circumference
DISC (XUANJI) into segments, the earliest examples have been found in
LATE NEOLITHIC PERIOD - SHANG late Neolithic sites on the east coast in Shandong province
DYNASTY and in the west in Shaanxi province. For an overview on the
development of notched discs, see Jessica Rawson, Chinese
the outer edge carved with three pronounced notches forming Jade from the Neolithic to the Qing, London, 1995, pp 160-162.
three arcs, each set with a pair of triple-notched serrations, the
center pierced with large circular aperture, a double-line lightly The present disc is unusually large, and only one other jade
carved across one side, the calci ed stone well-polished to notched disc of this impressive size appears to be recorded,
a mottled whitish-gray with black veining, one side with faint from the David David-Weill collection, sold in our Paris rooms,
traces of a leiwen pattern 16th December 2015, lot 24 ( g. 1), and later included in the
Diameter 13⅛ in., 33.4 cm exhibition Early Chinese Art from Private Collections, Eskenazi
Ltd., London, 2016, cat. no. 5. A much smaller disc excavated
PROVENANCE from Lizhuang, Teng Xian, Shandong province, attributed
Gordon Harris, Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, 1971. to the Longshan culture of the Neolithic period (ca. 2500-
2000 BC) shows a closely related pro le to the present disc,
LITERATURE compare Zhongguo yuqi quanji,
Dr. Peter M. Greiner, Astronomical Instruments End of the vol. 1, Hebei, 1992, no. 42.
Shang or Beginning of the Chou Dynasty, (Master Thesis),
University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, 1981. Several notched discs can be found in collections formed in the
1920s and 1930s, such as a disc formerly in the Eumorfopoulos
$ 60,000-80,000 Collection, London, and later acquired by the British Museum
in 1937, illustrated in Soame Jenyns, Chinese Archaic Jades
Gordon Harris 1971 in the British Museum, London, 1951, pl. X. Compare also an
example from the collection of HRH King Gustav VI Adolf
Peter M Greiner Astronomical Instruments of Sweden, published in Nils Palmgren, Selected Chinese
Antiquities from the Collection of Gustav Adolf Crown Prince of
End of the Shang or Beginning of the Chou Dynasty Sweden, Stockholm, 1948, pl. 40.1. Other examples of similar
form but smaller size, include one formerly in the Bishop White
1981 Collection and now in the Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto,
illustrated in Chen Shen and Gu Fang, Ancient Chinese Jades
from the Royal Ontario Museum, Beijing, 2016, pl. 23 and one
acquired from Ralph M. Chait Galleries, Inc., New York in 1927,
now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, illustrated
in “The Arts of Ancient China”, The Metropolitan Museum of
Art Bulletin, vol. 32, no. 2, New York, 1973-1974.

Fig. 1 An exceptional jade notched disc, xuanji, late Neolithic period to
Shang dynasty. Sold at Sotheby’s Paris, 16th December 2015, lot 24.

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