Wine Cup

This rhyton, carved in the shape of a rhinoceros-horn cup, is decorated with dragons in both low and high relief. Rhino horn, like jade itself, was expensive and exotic. It became popular material for decorative carving as early as the Sung dynasty (11th-12th century) and remained so through the nineteenth century. This vessel reflects the antiquarian taste that developed among the scholar classes at the Sung court and continued through Yuan (14th century) and early Ming (15th century). The dragon decor here derived from the ancient Chou style (6th century b.c.) of bronze ornamentation. Scholars of Sung greatly revered their own antiquity and took delight in commissioning and collecting objects that recalled the shapes and decorations of the Bronze Age.