11-23-15
Ancient Art 101
Professor Sandra Johnson
Jade Cong: Bowers Museum
The Jade Cong is a detailed piece of art that is composed of two different colors—a grey and a green sort of color (jade). The green section of this piece is circular with a square area on the sides of the “Cong”. In addition, this circular section of the piece represents the heavens while the square part represents the planet Earth. This is a solid piece of art that is about an inch thick and fully designed with many lines and circles that sort of represents faces. In addition, the pieces looks as if it is double stacked. However, the sides of the Jade Cong are four-sided and the tube that is positioned on the top and bottom of this piece helps it stand. As the ancient
Chinese …show more content…
I consider myself a religious person and to find out that the
Chinese culture believed that this complex stone can bridge the gap between us humans and God immediately peaked my interest. Another perspective that affected me was learning that Jade Cong aka “The
Stone of Heaven” was considered to be used specifically for religious and ceremonial purposes. Considering the fact that this piece of art came from many different places in the Chinese culture like the
Liangzhu culture for example. They were a Neolithic group of people who resided in the Jiangsu province whose tools (Jade) had a reputation of being complex. Having other Chinese cultures believe in the stone’s spiritual power helped the Jade Cong gain popularity across China.
The middle part of this piece is Jade which is not shocking because another meaning of Jade is “the stone of heaven”. So, the name of this piece and interpretation of the work (used for religious purposes) goes hand-in-hand with each other. This beautiful stone had a lot to live up to since the meaning of Jade is “stone of heaven”.
The format of the Jade Cong is basically a tube with a square-like area on the borders and a circular hole that goes through the