Large Soapstone Dragon Carving | ||
| Japanese Antiques278 of 736 |  |  |
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Posted 8 years ago
chananrubin
(6 items)
Large 9 pound dragon carving, stands about a foot tall and is two feet long. Carved from one piece of soapstone and has intricate carvings. Unsure of age and origin.
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Not a dragon. This is a mythical Kirin, hooves, backward raking horns, scales, and hair tail. Found on Japanese beer labels of the same name, samurai tachi (swords) and elsewhere. It is not possible to date soapstone, except by provenance and rarely, by markings. Smaller pieces, combinations of pots, vines, birds, monkeys and squirrels, were popular from the 1920s into the 50s. This very large piece is unusually nice and strictly guessing, dates to before WWII. For a variety of forms, search Kirin.
Wexval, thank you greatly for the information. By unusually nice you are implying that is better than similar dated pieces?
I like it more than any of my smaller collection described above.
Other name of the beast for research is Qilin :-)
Beautiful carving!
kryratango, is there any more information about this piece that you may know?
Sorry, no, but you may search for serpentine large Qilin/Kirin :-)
This looks like a late 19th century qilin carving, green soapstone.
Beautiful piece stunning great find