Disk (bi) with raised pyramids arranged in a grid, redecorated

1. Bought from Lee Van Ching [Li Wen qing] 李文卿, of Shanghai 上海, in New York, NY. For price, see Original Miscellaneous List, p. 270.

2. (Undated Folder Sheet note) Original attribution: Sung [Song] 宋. See further, S.I. 1172, Appendix VIII.

3. (Isabel Ingram Mayer, 1945) Late Chou [Zhou] 周 dynasty. For discussion of type see Folder Sheet F1939.14, note 3.

4. (Undated Folder Sheet note) Sp. G. is 2.989. Nephrite.

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

6. (Thomas Lawton, 1974) The disk, or "pi [bi] 璧," of polished nephrite has a conical, smooth bore hole in the center. Narrow  bands around the perforation and the outside edge of the "pi [bi] 璧" confine the raised spirals that decorate the neatly  smoothed surfaces.

Perforated disks appear in Chinese burials dating as early as Neolithic times and their regular, geometric shape  may well have been derived from round stone utensils. According to some Chinese texts, "pi [bi] 璧" were ritual symbols  of Heaven. While the earliest "pi [bi] 璧" are undecorated, the flat surfaces of Chou [Zhou] 周 and Han 漢 examples were embellished  by different designs, the most familiar consisting of raised spirals arranged in regular rows and accented with an  incised curling line (For excavated examples of early Western Han 漢 "pi [bi] 璧," see The Chinese Exhibition: A Pictorial Record of the Exhibition of Archaeological Finds of the People's Republic of China (Washington, DC: National Gallery of Art, 1974), nos. 152--57). One characteristic of the incised curls is that they are arranged so that no adjacent  curls turn in the same direction.

7. (Thomas Lawton, 1978) Late Eastern Chou [Zhou] 周, Warring States period, 3rd century BCE. See Folder Sheet for F1916.510.

8. (Thomas Lawton, Chinese Art of the Warring States Period: Change and Continuity, 480-222 B.C. [Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution, 1982], cat. no. 123) The disk of polished brown and green nephrite has a smooth,  slightly conical perforation at the center. Narrow flat bands around the perforation and outer edge of the disk  confine the pattern of incised spirals. Those spirals are carefully arranged so that no adjacent spirals turn in the same direction. The emphasis on incised spirals, rather than upon the low relief pattern that covers the surfaces in a regular grid, is a noteworthy feature of this disk. On stylistic grounds, the piece should be dated to the final years of the Warring States period.

Similarly decorated jade disks are illustrated by William Charles White and Max Loehr [1].

[1] William Charles White, Tombs of Old Lo Yang: A Record of the Construction and Contents of a Group of Royal Tombs at Chin ts'un, Probably Dating to 550 B.C. (Shanghai: Kelly and Walsh Limited, 1934), pl. 121, 303a; 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), p. 275.

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

10. (Susan Kitsoulis per Keith Wilson, April 20, 2010) Title changed from "Ritual disk, Bi 璧" to "Disk (bi 璧)."

11. (Jeffrey Smith per Matthew Clarke, July 8, 2022) Medium changed from "Jade" to "Jade (nephrite)."

12. (Najiba Choudhury per Keith Wilson, June 5, 2023) Title changed from "Disk (bi)" to "Disk (bi) with raised pyramids arranged in a grid, redecorated"; added Period Two as "Warring States period"; Date changed from "3rd century BCE" to "475-221 BCE"; and added Chinese Translation by Jingmin Zhang.