Belt hook and buckle

Two rectangles of white translucent hetian jade have been fashioned into a belt set. The squared hook shaped like a dragon in relief fits perfectly through a slot on the buckle. The base of thehook has a round stud; the buckle has an oval hole on one side and an elliptical stud on its base. A contorted dragonet carrying a floral branch in its mouth is crafted in openwork relief on the tops of the two facing squares. The line work of the details is remarkable in its refined incisions and deep grooves.

Buckles developed at the same time as belt hooks, from an early Han style with a fixed or movable prong. The movable prong, attached to one side of a round, square, or irregular frame, became the standard form throughout history. Buckles with only an open frame on one side, and no prong, were a later version. The earliest jade buckles with no prong have been discovered not in Han but in early Ming tombs (Zgyqqj 1993, vol. 5, plate 199). Several jade buckles with round frames now in the Palace Museum, Beijing, collection have been attributed to the Song, the Jin, and the Yuan periods (960–1368) (Zgyqqj 1993, vol. 5, plates 79, 80, 158–59). Among these, two sets, each consisting of a hook and a buckle with an opening, were identified as Yuan belt sets (Palace Museum, Beijing 1995, vol. 42, plates 71, 72, 74, 138, 145). The dragon's head was functional, not just decorative; it hooked directly into the opening on the buckle. The wearer could attach a belt onto the studs on both the hook and the buckle, so no prong was needed. The combination of a soft waxy polish on the exterior and a rather rough interior on the openwork reveal this as a copy of a Yuan style. The fluent carving and smooth finish on the outer surface of the relief were most likely done in the 1700s.