Eastern Art Online, Yousef Jameel Centre for Islamic and Asian Art

Ashmolean − Eastern Art Online, Yousef Jameel Centre for Islamic and Asian Art

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Disc with demons and dragons

  • loan
  • Details

    Associated place
    Asia China (place of creation)
    Date
    1911 - 1963
    Material and technique
    stone, with carved decoration
    Dimensions
    0.7 cm (height)
    8.8 cm (diameter)
    Material index
    Technique index
    formed carved,
    Object type index
    No. of items
    1
    Credit line
    Lent by the Sir Alan Barlow Collection Trust.
    Accession no.
    LI1301.21
  • Further reading

    University of Sussex, and Arts and Humanities Research Council, The Barlow Collection, supervised by Regina Krahl, Maurice Howard, and Aiden Leeves (Sussex: University of Sussex, 2006), no. J6

Location

    • currently in research collection

Objects are sometimes moved to a different location. Our object location data is usually updated on a monthly basis. Contact the Jameel Study Centre if you are planning to visit the museum to see a particular object on display, or would like to arrange an appointment to see an object in our reserve collections.

 

Publications online

  • The Barlow Collection by the University of Sussex

    The Barlow Collection

    The piece was meant to evoke archaic jade discs but neither its uneven shape and carving style nor its iconography are compatible with an early date, and the stone may not actually be jade.

    The piece is made from a variegated, pale grey-green to brown stone with an unusually matt, grainy texture. It is carved from a flat, roughly circular disc with a crouching demon figure in the central hole carved in openwork, two entwined addorsed dragons on the rim above and two addorsed tree shrews with entwined tails below. One side shows the stocky demon figure en face, with three tufts of hair on the head and scaly limbs, knees far apart and hands joined, the reverse depicts its scaly back. The animals are similarly depicted from front and back respectively, the dragons with their heads turned, to look at each other.

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