Catalogue entry no. 502 by Max Loehr:
502 Openwork Configuration of Animal and Birds
Brown and cream-colored, partly decomposed jade plaque. The design is symmetrical and both sides are identical. A large feline(?) head forms the center of a configuration in which all parts are continuous. What appear to be two body bands of the large animal read simultaneously as the tails of two dragons whose heads mark the upper corners of the plaque. The sinuous bodies of these two dragons continue downward into the similarly curved bodies of two birds whose heads lie upside down along the lower edge. The birds’ plumes form brackets to the large head in the middle. The body bands are treated homogeneously: they are slightly convex, bounded by marginal grooves and textured only by fine median lines and by paired transverse curves set at widely spaced intervals; the only differentiation of texture appears in the sparsely applied scale motif on the birds’ necks. Late Eastern Chou.
