An impressive and large archaic jade ‘mask’ cong, Neolithic period, Liangzhu culture

拍品描述

Chinese Jades from the Ralph Wanger Collection Height 7½ in., 19.1 cm The cong is unquestionably one of the most striking and magnificent forms ever produced by the world’s neolithic cultures. Composed of a central cylinder bounded by cuboid sections of geometric human masks, the form appears to have first been developed by the Liangzhu culture that emerged around the Yangtze river delta more than five thousand years ago and has continued to inspire connoisseurs, philosophers and emperors to this day. While later classical texts have ascribed complex meanings to this robust and imposing form – with the circular elements representing heaven and the square earth – the original significance of the cong to the preliterate Liangzhu is now lost to the sands of time. Hewn from substantial blocks of jade and placed among treasured possessions and talismans in elite funerary contexts, cong must have played a crucial role in local rites to have been afforded such care and attention; the complexity and skill of their design still striking to the contemporary viewer. Though similarly difficult to confirm in the absence of written sources, in its height, formal geometric pattern and rich colouration, the present cong appears to be a later culmination of the Liangzhu design. While shorter more experimental cong have been found mostly around the Liangzhu heartlands of modern-day Zhejiang, more formalized examples like the present – taller and more carefully sectioned with simplified masks – have been found in greater number further north in modern-day Jiangsu, including at sites in Sidun and Caoxieshan. Given their more consistent style, larger size and abstracted design, Rawson posits that larger Jiangsu examples like the present represent a culmination of the gradual formalizing of earlier experimental forms and should be dated to the late Liangzhu period; see a very similar seven-tier cong from the collection of Sir Joseph Hotung, now in the British Museum, London (accession no. 2022,3034.242) in Jessica Rawson, Chinese Jade from the Neolithic to the Qing, British Museum, London, 1995, cat. no. 3:5 (Fig. 1). Larger cong of this style are relatively rare but a small group of similar pieces appear to have been among the first Neolithic jades to arrive in the West and are preserved in the world’s leading collections. Compare a closely related seven-tier cong in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London (accession no. A.51-1936), in Ming Wilson, ‘Liangzhu Jades Rediscovered, Oriental Art, Winter 1995/96, pp 2-8 (Fig. 2); a dark grey cong of five and a half registers in the Harvard Art Museums, Cambridge, illustrated in Jenny F. So, Early Chinese Jades in the Harvard Art Museums, Cambridge, 2019, pl. 3; and a six-tier cong from the Qing Court Collection, now preserved in the National Palace Museum, Taipei (accession no. gu yu 02038), in Masterworks of Chinese Jade in the National Palace Museum, Taipei, 1970, pl. 7. Also compare a five-tier cong sold in our Hong Kong rooms, 9th October 2020, lot 52; and another unfinished seven-tier example sold in our Hong Kong rooms from the collection of Cissy and Robert Tang, 8th April 2023, lot 3784.

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