Deer presenting a vase

Using translucent olive-green jade with gray flaws and greenish veins, a jade artist has sculpted the deer deity presenting a ritual vessel. The jade, from a mine in Manasi in Xinjiang, has been given a polished, soapy luster, and the subject is similar to one on an ancient bronze. The tall vessel, mounted over a saddlelike cloth on the deer's back, is a bronze zun form, with a flaring top and a bulging waist. A series of friezes commonly seen on bronzes decorate it: panels on top shaped like banana leaves, four animal masks on the waist, and cloud patterns on the lower portion. The saddle cloth is edged in cloud heads and filled with stylized snow patterns, each consisting of six diamond-shaped panels that are repeated on the deer's body as smaller single-lined designs. At the bottom, the cloven hooves are shown by incised crevices, and small depressions are carved in the hind hooves. The piece is held in balance by the deer's horns, which curve back from its head to connect with the vessel.
By the 1700s, this subject had been identified as a symbol of longevity on bronzes, a symbol that began to be used in the Tang period) (Liang Shizheng [1700–1800] 1965, vol. 2, chap. 11, pp. 33–36). Two plaques found in a Song site in Xi'an and a Jin tomb in Heilongjiang were decorated with deer in an openwork grove (Zgyqqj 1993, vol. 5, plates 128, 160). Several extant jades in the Palace Museum, Beijing, attributed to the Song to Jin periods, have similar images of individual deeror deer in forests (Palace Museum, Beijing 1995, vol. 41, plates 50–52). None of these deerhas a vessel on its back, however; that idea'was a later elaboration of the legend. This Qing deer presenting a vessel was based on an illustration of the phrase shenlu sianbao (sacred deer presenting treasures).