This mountain-shaped carving is cut from jade, the stone the Chinese court valued above every other because it could be worked but never rushed. Jade does not bend; the carver removes everything that is not the object.
The cut is the point. Jade carving rewards a sure hand and punishes a second thought, so the mountain-shaped carving reads as a single decision rather than a sequence of them.
Jade carried the moral vocabulary of the Chinese court, the stone against which character itself was measured.
A mountain-shaped carving like this was made to outlast its owner by centuries, and it has. The jade still carries the chill it had when it left the Jin dynasty (1115-1234 CE) bench.
Object details
| Name | Lapis Lazuli Imperial Poetry Shanzi (青金石御制诗山子) |
|---|---|
| Artefact no. | 新00117970 |
| Technique | Jade |
| Period | Jin dynasty (1115-1234 CE) |
| Collection | The Palace Museum, Beijing |
| Source | Palace Museum Digital Collection (数字文物库) |
Image © The Palace Museum. View the original in the Palace Museum Digital Collection.