Cong vase

A cong-shaped vase, with a round central opening and four square outer corners, has been made of translucent green hetian jade. On each corner are sets of three friezes, consisting of two sections decorated with horizontal lines and one section decorated with two eyes, repeated vertically. This cong was modeled after a Liangzhu cong style.

Jade cong forms from the Liangzhu culture consist of one to thirteen vertical friezes in a repeating design. A monster-mask face on Liangzhu jades (seen in Cong tube with monster-mask designs, B81 J1) was often simplified on cong with multiple sections. In the simplified design a series of horizontal lines represented a mouth, nose, and eyebrows above round eyes, as shown here.

The obvious flaw in this copy is in the choice of hetian material from Xinjiang, far to the northwest of the Liangzhu culture. Liangzhu jade materials were acquired predominantly from nearby sources. There is no archaeological evidence suggesting that Xinjiang jade reached the area during the Neolithic period. In addition, the spaces between lines and the use of wide and narrow horizontal lines above the eyes are not characteristic of the Liangzhu style, which generally used much more even, dense, fine, unbroken lines. The tool marks on the eyes show that the circles were not worked by drilling with a circular drillhead, as are all eyes on Liangzhu cong but instead were engraved little by little with a sharp tool.