Page 17 - Christie's Important Chinese Art Nov 3 2020 London

club-shapes made of bronze, bone, or even wood. and design. It is a jade belt hook from the 3rd
Elite members of society might have worn belt hooks century BCE tomb of a nobleman in Shandong Qufu,
made of gilt bronze, or bronze with gold-, silver-, ancient capital of the Lu State. Excavated in 1978,
turquoise- or malachite-inlays. Far rarer are solid gold this belt hook is worked from a slightly smaller, but
belt hooks, understandably small due to the high also a single slab of translucent pale yellowish jade.
value of gold; jade insets often fill additional spaces It shares the von Oertzen’s decorative scheme —a
in larger gold hooks. The latter are exceptional and sculptural animal head as hook, a crested animal-
rare items closely associated with rulers and nobility mask in low relief on a shield-shaped body, plump
as symbols of status and authority, perhaps even of angular C-curls on the neck, and a whorl design
divine intervention. A well-known historical narrative on the button. But it lacks the lilting openwork
credits a belt hook with saving the life of a young configurations that distinguish the von Oertzen
prince by shielding him from an assassin’s arrow. belt hook.
This prince lived to become Duke Huan of Qi (died
The abstract openwork curls and sculptural animal
643 BCE), one of Five Hegemons of the Eastern
motifs on the von Oertzen belt hook were both
Zhou period.
part of a common ornamental vocabulary in jade
Substantial, club- or shield-shaped belt hooks design during the late 3rd and early 2nd centuries
worked from a single slab of jade, like the von BCE. The best parallels in abstract openwork
Oertzen example, are the rarest. Among the over curls adorn pendant ornaments from elite late 3rd
two hundred jade artifacts recovered from the century BCE tombs at Yanggong village (excavated
tomb of the King of Nanyue (datable before 122 1977) in Changfeng, Anhui province, at Shangwang
BCE) in Guangzhou (or Canton, excavated 1983), village (excavated 1993) in Linzi, Shandong province,
there were just four large jade belt hooks, only and from the early 2nd century BCE tomb at
two of which were worked from a single piece Shizishan in Xuzhou, Jiangsu province, excavated
of jade. Similar ratios pertain among many jade- 1994. A pair of jade combs in the Freer Gallery
rich burials throughout the last centuries BCE. of Art, Smithsonian Institution, acquired in the
Surveys and studies of belt hooks published in the early twentieth century with a purported Luoyang
recent half century reveal that unusually large belt provenance like the von Oertzen belt hook, also
hooks made with valuable materials were both display similar openwork curled configurations.
exceptional and unique creations. No two are alike.
From the same early 2nd century BCE tomb at
Each was a singular product conceived by a master
Shizishan came large jade drinking vessels — an oval
craftsman based on available material on hand and
cup (erbei), a cylindrical tankard (zhi), and stemmed
the ornamental vocabulary of the time. No wonder
goblet — shaped from a similar high-quality pale
that the observant Western Han prince Liu An
yellowish jade. Such jade vessels are prime symbols
(179–122 BCE) noted at court: “Among those seated,
of excesses in jade consumption accessible only to
the hooks worn on each belt are all different …”
ruling princes at the time. The low-relief animal mask
(Huainanzi: Shuolinxun 13)
and elegant birds rendered in fine incised lines on the
To date, only one example is known to approximate von Oertzen belt hook also adorn a pair of oval cups
the von Oertzen belt hook in material, shape, size, in the Harvard Art Museums, also worked from a pale

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