Chinese Jades From Han To Ch’ing

By James C Y Watt
The Asia Society, Inc
1980 ISBN 0-87848-057-9

The Asia Society writes:

According to Chinese reckoning there are five colors of jade: red, yellow, white, black and green. A traditional description specifies the best colors as red as a coxwomb, yellow as steamed chestnuts, white as congealed fat, black as lacquer.

In China, jade has always had powerful ritual and symbolic significance. From the earliest times jade carvings were placed in tombs to serve as protective talismans, and Confucian scholars later attributed to the stone all the virtues of the ideal man in an ideal state. But the Chinese have been equally attracted by the physical properties of this tough, lustrous stone, giving to many small pieces the name as ‘pa wan’, hold and enjoy.

The jades assembled here, dating from the second century B.C to the nineteenth century A.D, exemplify some of the highest achievements of the jade carver’s art, and also highlight the problems that beset scholars and collectors who study these objects. Although much has been written on the archaic jades of the Shang and Chou dynasties (1523-256 B.C), the jades of later periods have received comparatively little attention. For the most part these pieces are heirlooms, passed from generation to generation and collector to collector. Archaeological finds and historical records have provided a few clues, but questions of dating, evolution of style, and the use and significance of particular pieces are often exceedingly difficult to answer.

In this volume James Watt explores specific areas in the later history of Chinese jades. He has selected certain ‘themes’, such as the evolution of the animal style or the taste of a small group of scholar gentry, and draws on recent archaeological discoveries, comparisons with other decorative arts, and traditional methods of connoisseurship to place these objects in their proper context. Over 200 examples from distinguished collections in Hong Kong and the United States are illustrated (11 in full color) and discussed in detail.

A specialist in Chinese Art, James Watt is the foremost authority on jades of the Han and succeeding dynasties.