Libation Cup

This jade form derives from the horn-shaped cups of north and west China. The earliest fine example was excavated from the second century B.C.E. tomb of the king of Nanyue, in Guangzhou. The form was popularized under the Tang dynasty (618-907), when west and east Asia were commercially intertwined, particularly in the ceramics trade, but also in silver, agate and jade. By the Ming period, this type of cup, or rhyton, represented both the strong archaistic flare of the time and the persistent vogue for western exoticism.