Jades from China’s Ancient Kingdoms

The Norton Museum or Art's Chinese galleries present a fascinating array of expertly crafted jade objects ranging from prehistory to the eighteenth century. The long span of production – up to 7,000 years by some estimates – indicates the significance jade possessed among the inhabitants of China’s earliest cultures, as well as the resonance of the material and its meanings throughout Chinese history. In the Meyer Gallery on the Museum’s second floor, some of the earliest jade forms are based upon utilitarian blades (such as the ceremonial blade known as a zhang). Others, in the form...