A superb jade rhyton, the vessel is of oval section with an undulating mouth bordered with a key-fret band and with a broad archaistic frieze of geometric kui dragons between thin corded bands. The vessel rises from the back of a phoenix, its head turned towards its splayed tail and its wings wrapped around both sides of the vessel, and is supported on the bird’s feet. The phoenix is particularly finely worked, its head in very high relief contrasting with the low relief body, with incised neck feathers, geometric designs to its wings and hooks to the ends of its tail feathers. The stone is a fine white tone with small russet patches.

Qianlong period
Height: 6 5/8”, 17 cm

For a related rhyton with a similarly worked phoenix and of strikingly similar material in the Forbidden City, see Li, Chinese Jades throughout the Ages – Connoisseurship of Chinese Jades, Vol. 11, no. 41, pp. 82-3; and see no. 40, pp. 80-1, for a similarly shaped example worked with archaistic kui dragons.