17th century mottled nephrite jade pendant worn off the belt as a fondling stone. It depicts an archaic style split tail hydra crawling over the top corner. This mottled jade 'fragment' of a Han carving is actually the product of the Ming period. The taste for archaistic designs was strong enough in this period that many works of this style were created. These were not copies, but new works using the design vocabulary of an earlier period.
