NEOLITHIC PERIOD, HONGSHAN CULTURE, 4TH-3RD MILLENNIUM BC

In her discussion of a grey-green jade Hongshan coiled pig-dragon of slightly larger size (6.3 cm.) and with less detailed facial features, in the British Museum, Jessica Rawson in Chinees Jade from the Neolithic to the Qing, London, 1995, pp. 116-17, fig. 1:4, notes the pig-dragon, ”was obviously of great importance to the Hongshan peoples, as we can see from the very substantial and beautifully worked examples in this form. Although both the design of the face and the shape of its body had some influence in the Liangzhu period and the Shang dynasty, the veneration of the form seems to have disappeared with the Hongshan people themselves.” Rawson also illustrates, p. 116, fig. 1, the upper portion of a Hongshan jade pig-dragon with facial features similar to those of the current pig-dragon. Other similarly depicted Hongshan jade pig-dragons include the example (8.5 cm.) from the Bei Zu Collection sold at Sotheby’s Paris, 10 June 2021, lot 83, and the larger example (10 cm.) from the Hei-Chi Collection sold at Sotheby’s Hong Kong, Monochrome II, 9 October 2020, lot 21.