Printed from Woolley & Wallis

Description

A CHINESE INSCRIBED JADE CEREMONIAL AXE, YUE
SHANG DYNASTY OR LATER

The thin trapezoidal blade with rounded sides tapering to a gently curved cutting edge, with a drilled hole to the short edge, one face inscribed with an Imperial poem, the date for the Qianlong jihai year (corresponding to 1779) and two seals reading guxiang and tai yu, the reverse with a subtle bevel running vertically through the centre, the stone with profuse buff and russet mottling, 12.3cm.

Qianlong was known for his love of archaism and left a number of early jades inscribed with his poems. See the bi disk with an Imperial inscription to the edge, now in the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, accession no.O.38-1946 for a comparable example. Qianlong also commissioned a series of jade axes based on ancient forms, as seen in the yellow jade example incised with an eagle chasing a beast in the Palace Museum, Beijing, illustrated in The Complete Collection of Treasures of the Palace Museum: Jadeware, pp.150, no.121.

The inscription on the piece offered here reads:

玉寓潤溫斧寓剛，古人作佩意誠良。
恊中並取韋弦戒，比德應知仁義方。
成器久當越秦漢，命工時或在殷商。
摩挲全泯夔紋迹，脂白藏英韫栗黃。
乾隆己亥御題
古香、太玉。

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