Fish pendant

An opaque white suffuses most of one side and both ends of the other side of this arc-shaped fish carved from dark-green jade. The body is incised with sharply curved lines on the mouth and the tail. The fins and eyes are shown by wide grooves and triangular bevel cutting. The mouth is cut into a slit opposite a notch along the top of the head. Close to the mouth, a hole was drilled from two sides.

The use of green jade and the design of a rather elongated body attempted to follow a Western Zhou style. Western Zhou fish pendants were relaxed, simple, and naïve (Liu 1996, plates 12, 27, 36, 61, 72–76). They had straightforward shapes, with no exaggerated contours. Loosely arranged short strokes depicted fins, and the fish generally did not have slits or pointed notches for features.

The surface of this piece was altered by chemical treatment, so that one side was deliberately left with more clear areas than the other. The irregular outer silhouette, with its intensively cut fins, was a distortion of the Western Zhou fish design. The rotating wheel of a modern tool left telltale marks on both the bevel cutting and the hole.