ANTIQUES; Jade in Many Hues Evokes China's Regal Past
By RITA REIF
Published: June 25, 1989
CHINESE JADES HAVE been collected since antiquity more enthusiastically than any other Asian stone artifacts. As the broad sampling of examples assembled in ''Jade,'' an exhibition at Azuma Gallery, 50 Walker Street in the SoHo section of Manhattan, makes clear, the attraction of the precious material is multifaceted.
Norio Azuma, the gallery owner who organized the show, which remains through July 3, chose jades produced over 3,000 years. Many are austerely handsome, some moderate in price. The 120 miniature sculptures, vessels, seals, items of jewelry and boxes date from the time of the Chou dynasty (1122-256 B.C.) through the 19th century. The diversity of this selection extends to its varying quality and to the prices, which range from $75 for a 19th-century Lilliputian bell, one inch high, to $50,000 for a cream-white Chou vessel on three legs, a form borrowed from ancient bronzes.
Since the finest jades command even higher sums today - a Ming incense vessel in emerald and apple-green jade was auctioned for a record $915,000 in January by Christie's in Hong Kong - this show's large representation of moderate-quality works of engaging design is unusual and welcome.
Snow-white jades, the most desirable of all to some connoisseurs, abound in this presentation, especially among the 18th-century objects. Well-crafted Ch'ien Lung items include a flower-shaped box, a tiny cup, several bowls and carvings of deities. The shimmering surfaces of most of these objects are often intricately carved with dragons, flowers and clouds. The show's most offbeat white jade item is an exquisitely proportioned, softly polished inro, a box thinner and no larger than a pack of cigarettes for carrying about small objects that was made to be worn by a Japanese man from a cord attached to the sash of his obi. The box opens at the top and bottom and is carved on front and back with flowers.
''Not too many exist,'' Mr. Azuma said, adding that in more than 15 years of experience as a dealer, he had seen very few inro in white jade.
Some of the exhibition's most impressive objects are not pure white, a jade color reserved in ancient China for imperial use. The majority of these stone items are a mix of greens, blues, browns or purples. A few are jet black - the stone color of one of the show's prizes, a long, tapering, tab-shaped Han belt hook, carved at the end with the head of a robust dragon.
Sung emperors favored brown and white jade, and Ming rulers opted for black and white or gray. In the 18th century, white and green jade objects dominated, but other colors flourished too, as can be seen in a glorious 60-inch-long necklace of large jade beads, each the diameter of a nickel. By the 19th century, Burmese jadeite in brilliant greens and purples enriched the spectrum available to jade artisans. The proof is seen in a variety of mostly small objects from this period, including several disklike pendants with curiously carved surfaces.
The finest miniature animal sculptures are far earlier works, from the Tang, Sung and Ming periods, when real or imagined beasts - lions, bears and dragons - were believably ferocious, and ducks and deer were depicted as tame charmers. The color of jade chosen invariably heightened the desired effect. This explains why ducks, sometimes chubby and sometimes graceful, are mostly white, while lions, tigers, bears and dragons are serious studies carved of gray or black jade.
Animals are often contorted in shape, an artistic conceit dictated more by the character of the stone than by a craftsman's fantasy. Since jades until the 17th century were fashioned primarily from small lumps of stone found in riverbeds, master artisans wasted as little as possible of the material at their disposal.
Jade is harder than most minerals and metals, and to shape it, craftsmen always used saws, wheels, drills and gouges. Tough and lustrous, the stone in its purest form is white or transparent. But the presence of other elements adds such colors as red, yellow, black and green. Sometimes craftsmen would gracefully exploit a vein of color, as in a golden-hued 17th-century cup streaked with a feathery band of green just below the rim, an accident of nature enhanced by man. Larger vessels and sculptures of the 18th century or later were crafted from jade quarried in blocks from the mountains - stone that was never as highly valued as the river finds.
Most of the earliest jades are less impressive for their color than for their robust form and the bold images carved in their surfaces. A marvelous Chou tomb object that combines a doughnutlike symbol of heaven and a blade is embellished over most of its surface with small rectangles, each of a slightly different shape and size for reasons unknown today. It costs $5,000.
A Warring States-period dragon, cut before 221 B.C. from a thin flat panel of mottled buff and brown stone streaked with green, is a haunting image almost one foot in length. ''We don't know the purpose for which the dragon was made or how it was used,'' Mr. Azuma said. ''It may have been worn - or used as a ritual object.'' The price is $8,500.
Notable among the smaller 18th-century objects are a group of seals, including one topped by a goat perched on a little block of stone ($3,000). There are several fine cups smaller than those used today for espresso, one of which echoes an archaic three-legged vessel in pale bluish-gray jade ($800) and another in pale green stone ($450). A larger cup of marbleized white and green has a dark green thin pedestal base and is priced at $10,000. A more elaborate box of lavender-hued jade, fitted with carved handles, a flowerlike knob on top and other decorations, is an uncommon example - which explains the price of $12,000.
Chou Dynasty sculpture; white-jade yen from the Western Chou dynasty