Catalogue of Chinese Jade Carvings — Warring States to Han Dynasty
Year: 2025
Type: article
Abstract: Warring States to Han Dynasty (ca. 475 BCE – 220 CE): Jade Artistry and Ritual Vessels with Mythic Beasts During the Warring States period (ca. 475 – 221 BCE) China was politically fragmented but artistically vibrant. Regional courts fostered highly inventive jade workshops. Carvers perfected deep openwork and high-relief modelling, using contrasting surface finishes—matte, polished, and frosted—to create complex three-dimensional forms. Alongside thin dress plaques, artisans produced large sculptural vessels and zoomorphic containers depicting dragons, phoenixes, chimera-birds, and horned beasts. These pieces served as ritual burners, incense holders, and offering jars, their animal shapes embodying celestial guardians and powers of renewal. With the unification under the Qin (221 – 206 BCE) and especially the Han dynasty (206 BCE – 220 CE), jade art entered an imperial phase. Han ateliers achieved new monumentality in ritual incense burners (boshanlu) and covered wine vessels, often carved as crouching animals or mountain-shaped landscapes through which perfumed smoke evoked the mist of sacred peaks. Workshops also continued to produce mythic composite creatures—dragons, winged spirits, phoenix-griffins—modelled in the round to guard tombs and accompany the soul. Technical hallmarks of the era include refined rotary drilling and abrasive sawing for intricate hollowing and precise joins; multistage polishing that enhanced natural white, pale green, or warm brown hues; subtle polychrome effects and occasional inlays of gold, lacquer, or glass to emphasize eyes, scales, and cloud motifs. Functions and meanings expanded far beyond Bronze Age prototypes. Jade became a ritual medium, with incense burners, sacrificial wine containers, and altar fittings central to state and ancestral ceremonies; a funerary safeguard, from animal-shaped spirit vessels to complete jade burial suits believed to preserve the body and ensure immortality; a cosmological emblem, its mythic beasts and mountain forms expressing the ascent of the soul and harmony of Heaven and Earth. Bridging Bronze Age traditions and early imperial aesthetics, the jades of the Warring States to Han dynasty—especially sculptural ritual vessels and three-dimensional images of mythic animals—represent a summit of technical innovation and spiritual symbolism that shaped Chinese jade art for centuries. Вы сказали:
Author: NONA, Dronova
Language: English
Subfield: Sociology and Political Science
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W7082375457
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