Published: Jean-Paul Desroches, The Beginning of the World. Dragons, Phoenix and Other Chimera, Lienart, Paris, 2020, p. 34-35, no. 11.

China, 25-220 AD. The belt comprising eight plaques of rectangular form with rounded corners and an end piece, each finely carved and pierced in low relief with beasts of the four guardians emerging from clouds, including the dragon, the tiger, the vermillion bird, and the turtle. The individual sections connected by incised gilt metal joints (of modern make). The semi-translucent stones are of a deep celadon color with russet and cloudy white inclusions.

Provenance: From the Sam and Myrna Myers Collection. Sam and Myrna are first generation Americans, who shared a taste for collecting beautiful objects of art. On a trip to Ascona, Switzerland, the couple stumbled into a small antique shop which started their journey of collecting antiques. When Sam Myers was sent to Paris by his law firm in the mid-1960s, he and his wife Myrna became so enamored with the city that they decided to make it their home. There, over the course of 50 years, they built an extraordinary art collection, and in 1976, Myrna opened a gallery in Paris specializing in Asian art. Their collection spans a wide range of precious objects from Chinese jades, ceramics, textiles, Indian ivory carvings, to Japanese clothing and lacquer, some of which was exhibited in the Kimbell Art Museum. Part of their collection was sold at Sotheby’s, London ‘Two Americans in Paris, The Collection of Sam and Myrna Myers’, on 4 November 2021. The couple also worked together with jade expert Filippo Salviati to create one of the most outstanding jade collections globally and authored several books on jade, including ‘Radiant Stones’ (2000), ‘The Language of Adornment’ (2002) and ‘Genèse de l’empire céleste’ (2020).
Condition: Very good condition with ancient wear, signs of weathering and erosion, surface scratches around the joints. The stone with natural fissures, some of which may have developed into thin hairline cracks. The gilt metal joints with corrosion and surface wear.

Weight: 516 g
Dimensions: Length 80.7 cm

The Four Guardians (Chin. ‘sixiang’) are mythological creatures appearing among the Chinese constellations along the ecliptic and viewed as the guardians of the four cardinal directions. They are the Azure Dragon of the East, the Vermilion Bird of the South, the White Tiger of the West, and the Black Tortoise of the North. Each of the creatures is most closely associated with a cardinal direction and a color, but also additionally represents other aspects, including a season of the year, an emotion, virtue, and one of the Chinese ‘five elements’. Each has been given its own individual traits, origin story, and a reason for being. Symbolically, and as part of spiritual and religious belief and meaning, these creatures have been culturally important across countries in the Sinosphere.

Literature comparison:
Compare a related jade belt buckle with a four divine beast pattern, dated to the Eastern Han dynasty, in the National Palace Museum, Taipei, image number K1C001328N000000000PAC.