Dragons chasing a pearl through cloud is one of the oldest subjects in Chinese art. On this small block of Shoushan stone, the carver let the colour of the stone set the design. The warmer cream and honey tones at the top became the dragons and cloud scrolls, cut in high relief, while the cooler milky white below was left calm and plain. The reddish natural veins run through both and were worked into the composition rather than carved away.
Shoushan stone comes from the hills north of Fuzhou in Fujian province. Chinese scholars valued it for centuries, mostly for seals and desk objects like this one, made to be handled and studied between bouts of reading. One side carries a vertical incised inscription whose characters were originally filled with gold, now mostly worn to traces in the cut lines. It appears to reproduce two Tang poems from the Three Hundred Tang Poems anthology: Meng Haoran’s Spring Dawn and Li Bai’s Quiet Night Thoughts. The Li Bai is a man looking at moonlight on the floor and thinking of home, which is not a bad thing to keep on a desk. A partial signature of the carver or calligrapher is visible but cannot be read.
It comes on its original wooden stand, shaped to fit this stone. The dark wood gives the pale carving a firm edge against whatever sits behind it.
Condition notes
Good overall condition. The main carving is well preserved and the relief remains clear. The inscription shows natural age-related wear. The wooden stand has expected signs of age and use.
