Harvesting knife (hu 笏), fragment

1. Bought from Lai Yuan and Company 來遠公司, New York. For price, see Original Miscellaneous List, p. 228. $400.

2. (Undated Folder Sheet note) Original attribution: Chinese. Han 漢. See further, S.I. 1033, Appendix VIII, and Miscellaneous Envelope file (see Paragraph 5).

3. (Isabel Ingram Mayer, 1946) Chou [Zhou] 周 dynasty.

4. (Undated Folder Sheet note) Sp. G. is 2.916.

5. (H. Elise Buckman, 1964) The Envelope File contained no further information, and has now been destroyed.

6. (Thomas Lawton, 1978) Late Shang 商. This extremely thin blade would appear to have been sliced from a thicker blade, but unlike pieces which have been sliced, it is highly polished on both sides.

7. (Julia K. Murray, 1982) Although F1916.416 is similar in size and shape to horizontal knives with shallow cutouts at one end, a category discussed on the Folder Sheet for F1917.24, it also has elements appropriate for a chisel (see Folder Sheet F1917.31): one of the short ends is slightly beveled to a sharpened edge, and the opposite end has a single perforation. The slicing of the jade to this degree of thinness may have produced the "disintegrated hole" mentioned in the general description; it is either a place where an inclusion dropped out of the nephrite fabric, or else a point at which the slicing went too deep and subsequent repolishing broke through the thin wall.
 
For a further discussion see F1917.24.

8. (Jeffrey Smith per Keith Wilson, July 8, 2008) Ceremonial Object added as secondary classification.

9. (Susan Kitsoulis per Keith Wilson, April 2, 2010) Object name changed from "Ceremonial implement" to "Ceremonial object." Title changed from "Ceremonial implement" to "Straight chisel (gui 圭)."

10. (Jeffrey Smith per Janet Douglas, June 17, 2010) Nephrite added as modifier to existing medium of "jade" based on conservation analysis.

11. (Jeffrey Smith per Keith Wilson, April 21, 2016) Period changed from Shang dynasty with object date ca. 12th-11th century BCE to Late Neolithic period, with object date ca. 5000-ca.1700 BCE.