HONGSHAN CULTURE, CIRCA 3900-3000 BC

It is very rare to find a carving of a pig-dragon of the current size. For other examples of pig-dragons carved in a similar style with a single aperture, compare with a dark green jade example (16.6 cm. high) unearthed from Yangcheng, Bairin Right Banner, Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, now in the Bairin Right Banner Museum, illustrated ibid., p. 105, no. 9; a celadon jade example (15 cm. high) in the Liaoning Provincial Institute of Archaeology and Cultural Relics, illustrated in Hongshan wenhua yuqi jianshang, Beijing, 2014, p. 94, no. 1; a third example (13 cm. high) from the Irving Collection, sold at Christie's New York, Lacquer, Jade, Bronze, Ink: The Irving Collection Day Sale, 21 March 2019, lot 1180 (fig. 1); and a fourth example from the Chang Wei-Hwa Collection (11.8 cm. high), sold at Christie's Hong Kong, The Chang Wei-Hwa Collection of Archaic Jades, Part 1 - Neolithic Period, 27 November 2019, lot 2706 (fig. 2).