Disk (bi) with raised pyramids

• 1. (Jeffrey Smith per Keith Wilson, July 29, 2008) "Ceremonial Object" added as secondary classification.

  2. (Daisy Yiyou Wang, May 8, 2012) The correspondence from the New York City based art dealer Frank Caro to  Paul Singer, January 17, 1957, Paul Singer papers, Freer and Sackler Archives, indicates that by the time of the correspondence, the bi 璧 disk had been acquired by Paul Singer, and the bi 璧 disk was shown in October 1943 at the Ossining College, Ossining, NY, and was shown in the Toledo Museum of Art in May 1948 and the Norton Gallery of Art in 1950, and published in the catalogue C. T. Loo, INC., An Exhibition of Chinese Archaic Jades: Arranged for Norton Gallery of Art (Norton Gallery of Art, 1950), pl. 39:6.

  3. (Daisy Yiyou Wang, August 15, 2013) This disk has only one side decorated with crosshatch marks. It has sharp edges along the inner and outer circles.

  Title changed from "Bi 璧 disk" to "Disk (bi 璧) with crosshatch."

  5. (Jeffrey Smith per Matthew Clarke, June 15, 2022) Medium changed from glass to calcite.

  6. (Najiba Choudhury per Keith Wilson, June 9, 2023) Title changed from "Bi disk" to "Disk (bi) with raised pyramids"; Date changed from "2nd century BCE" to "206 BCE-9 CE"; added Chinese Translation by Jingmin Zhang; and added Unpublished Research by Doris Dohrenwend.

Draft catalogue entry (no. 894) for S2012.9.714 for the catalogue of the Singer Collection (1970--1990); by Doris Dohrenwend
Disk
Western Han 漢 dynasty, 2nd century BCE
Glass (?)
Diameter 16.4 cm (6 7/16 in)

This disk appears to be stone, and there were, indeed, stone imitations of jade bi 璧. It is almost wholly an opaque, dull buff, color, with some brown earth still adhering. It sounds like glass when struck, however, and is faintly translucent when held against strong light. The back is plain and flat. Set within sunken plain borders, the front is densely textured with a late version of the so called basketry pattern, itself an abbreviated form of the spiral decoration of Warring States jades. [1]

The Singer bi 璧 is comparable with a green glass disk excavated near the tomb of Han 漢 emperor Wudi 武帝 (reign 141--87 BCE); analysis proved this Shaanxi 陝西 find to be a lead barium or more distinctively Chinese glass rather than soda lime glass. [2] It may be related also to a jade bi 璧 from the Mancheng 滿城 tombs in Hebei 河北 province, relatively late in the sequence of jades discovered in these spectacular cliff burials and so perhaps contemporary with the lifetime of the prince of Zhongshan 中山, who died in 113 BCE. In short, all indications point to a Western Han 漢 date for this disk, one of the largest intact examples known to date.

Published: C. T. Loo, INC., An Exhibition of Chinese Archaic Jades: Arranged for Norton Gallery of Art (Norton Gallery of Art, 1950), pl. 39:6; John Haskins, "Ch'ang-sha": The Art of the Peoples of Ch'u, 5th--3rd Centuries B.C., A Loan Exhibition (New York: Chinese Art Society of America, 1957), no. 15; John D. La Plante, Arts of the Chou Dynasty (Stanford: Stanford University Museum, 1958), no. 17.

[1] For examples of spiral style XII, 2nd--1st BCE centuries, see Max Loehr, Ancient Chinese Jades from the Grenville L. Winthrop Collection in the Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University (Cambridge, MA: Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University, 1975).

[2] Wang Zhijie 王志杰, Zhu Jieyuan朱捷元, Maoling wenwu baoguansuo 茂陵文物保管所, and Shaanxi sheng bowuguan 陕西省博物馆, "Han Maoling jiqi peizangzhong fujin xinfaxian de zhongyao wenwu 汉茂陵及其陪葬冢附近新发现的重要文物," Wenwu 文物 1976.7: pp. 55--56.

• Arts of the Chou Dynasty. Exh. cat. Stanford, California. cat. 179, pp. 27, 61.