Belt hook with a dragons head

Grayish-green translucent jade polished with a soft glimmer was used for this hook, which consists of a wide, plain handle ending in a dragon's head. On the base are two rectangular projections with slits for attaching the hook to a belt. The head has no openwork or highly refined carving, only deep and shallow grooves to indicate the dragon's hair, horns, eyebrows, eyes, nose, and mouth. The line work is simple and straightforward, and the form is unusually wide and thick for a belt hook.

Belt hooks of this type often have two rectangular or round horizontal slits at the base, through which a belt can pass. The slits distinguished this type from most others in which a stud on the base plugged into a hole in the belt. The new two-slit design was inspired by a Warring States Period form with a stud and a square ring on the base. The stud was inserted into a hole of a leather belt, and the belt then passed through the ring, making the hook more secure (Wang 1982, 78, fig. 5).

The hook shown here retained the style of the classical Chinese mandolin piba, but its two-slit design is close to that of modern belts. By the Ming period, most belts had come to be made of textiles, and the slit design could be attached to a soft silk belt without cutting a hole for the stud used on ancient belt buckles.