Belt hook

A belt hook has been worked in green translucent hetian jade with a highly polished surface. The dragon's head, with simple facial features in round sculpting, turns upward at a 45-degree angle. On the smoothly curved piba handle, the stud is set close to one side of the base.

The design on this piece is typical of archaeological finds from tombs in Guangdong, Liaoning, and Jiangsu provinces, dating from the Spring and Autumn Period (770–481 bce) of the Eastern Zhou to the Eastern Han period (25–220 ce). The stud on early examples was close to the end opposite the dragon's head, but in later pieces it gradually moved toward the center of the handle (Wang 1985, 284, figs. 12, 15–18). The dragons' heads on early jades always looked back 180 degrees, but from the Eastern Zhou period (770–256 bce) they began turning at angles between 180 and 90 degrees.

The basic form of this piece retains the archaic piba shape, but the positions of its head and stud follow a Western Han model.