J.J. Lally & Co., Oriental Art / New York City, New York

The phoenix bird decoration on the present cup is unique but a number of other archaic jade cups of this form decorated with scroll motifs and stylized petals are recorded, including a stem cup from the Qing Court Collection, now in the Palace Museum, Beijing, with ring handle at one side, illustrated in Gugong bowuyuan cang wenwu zhenpin quanji (The Complete Collection of Treasures of the Palace Museum), Jadeware (I), Hong Kong, 1995, p. 264, no. 220; another cup with ring handle in the collection of the National Palace Museum, Taipei, illustrated by Gu (ed.), Zhongguo chuanshi yuqi quanji (Chinese Jades in Traditional Collections), Vol. 2, Beijing, 2010, p. 132; a stem cup without handle excavated in 1976 at the site of a Qin dynasty palace (Efang Gong) near Xi’an, illustrated in Zhongguo yuqi quanji (Compendium of Chinese Jades), Vol. 4, Shijiazhuang, 1993, p. 6, no. 7, with caption on p. 229; and another stem cup without handle excavated in 1983 from the Western Han period tomb of the King of Nanyue at Xiangganshan, Guandong province, illustrated by Lin, The Search for Immortality: Tomb Treasures of Han China, London, 2012, pp. 287-289.

Jade stem cups of this type were objects of luxury made for the emperor and powerful feudal rulers. Lin, op cit., pp. 287 and 289 cites the famous Han dynasty Shiji (Book of History) where it is recorded by Sima Qian that the emperor Wudi (r. 141-87 B.C.) believed drinking dew and jade powder from a jade cup conferred longevity and therefore ordered a device for collecting dewdrops to be built at the Jian Zhang Palace.