Jade Plaque (475–221 BCE): Art, History and Details

Jade Plaque (475–221 BCE) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

This beautiful pair of late Eastern Zhou openwork jade plaques illustrate a level of creativity and technical achievement that was unequaled before or since. Taking the shape of a pair of fantastic creatures, they are at once tigerlike, rhinolike, and dragonlike. Their strong silhouettes are marked with shallow relief bands, and their subtly swelling embellished surfaces are finished to the same degree on both sides.

Object facts

• Title: Jade Plaque
• Date: 475–221 BCE
• Culture: China, Henan province, Eastern Zhou dynasty (770–256 BCE), Warring States period (475–221 BCE)
• Type: Jade
• Technique: nephrite
• Dimensions: Overall: 22.5 x 8.9 cm (8 7/8 x 3 1/2 in.)
• Collection: China - Zhou Dynasty
• Department: Chinese Art
• Accession number: 1991.78.1

Collection credit

Purchase from the J. H. Wade Fund and the John L. Severance Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Cunningham, Michael R. Masterworks of Asian art. Cleveland, Ohio: Cleveland Museum of Art, 1998.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.