Weiner Mihályné szerk.: Az Iparművészeti Múzeum Évkönyvei 7. (Budapest, 1964)

HOPP FERENC MÚZEUM — MUSÉE FERENC HOPP - Horváth, Tibor: Four Archaic Chinese Jade Carwings

TIBOR HORVÁTH FOUR ARCHAIC CHINESE JADE CARVINGS In memóriám A. Salmony I. Knot-openers Berthold Laufer hook, Jade, a Study in Chinese Archaeology and Religion,

1 a fundamental work on this topic, treats bodkins for undoing knots (hi or chuei) on the basis of Wu Ta-ch'eng's work Ku yii t'u k'ao (1889). According to S. Howard Hansford — A Glossary of Chinese Art and Archaeology

2 — the character should be read as hsi. B. H. Mathews does the same — Chinese-English Dictionary

3 — ,,hsi = An ivory bodkin worn at the girdle and used for undoing knots." Such objects made of jade are turning up rarely. In the more recent publications I found only the following: Soame Jenyns : Chinese Archaic Jades in the British Museum,

4 Pl. XXXVI. F = ,,Loop fastener? Said to have come from Shou-chou. Late Chou". Alfred Salmony, Archaic Chinese Jades from the Edward and Louise B. Sonnenschein Collection,

5 Pl. CVI. 9 = ,.Undulating Pin-shaped object, so-called Knot-opener, Pendant, Han". Ch'en Chih-fo-Wu Shan® include a specimen (p. 416, bottom), after Wu Ta-ch'eng, also reprinted by B. Laufer

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,,Knot-opener from the Han period or later (hsi)". On the next page we find two views of a jade object decorated with the animal lin from the Sui-T'ang period. (According to Mathews the lin is ,,the female of the Chinese unicorn.") This latter illustration (here fig. 1) in the book of Ch'en Chih-fo — Wu Shan is extremely helpful to us in identifying one of the jade objects in our Museum (fig. 2). Only by the workmanship, could we class this 13 cm long and 0,4 cm thick piece as a jade, in the same broad sense, as yü is understood by the Chinese. According to Prof. L. Tokody (Museum of Natural Sciences, Budapest) it is of steatite, a much softer stone as the wear on the edge of one side shows. It very likely absorbed moisture from the soil surrounding where it was put, probably in a tomb and became uneven on the surface. Its colour 1 Chicago Field Museum of Natural History, 1912. pp. 238 — 241, figs. 148 — 150. 2 London, The China Society, 1954. p. 26. 3 Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press, 1952. 4 London, The Trustees of the British Museum, 1951. 6 The Art Institute of Chicago, 1952. 6 Chung-kuo t'u-an shan-kao tzu-liao, Peking, Jenmin meishu, 1953. 7 Op. cit., fig. 148.