Jade figure of a boy wrapped in leaves

Of the Five Happinesses of traditional China - a good marriage, sons, wealth, honour, and long life - perhaps the most important is sons, and the more the better. Here is surely one of the fattest and finest of innumerable representations in Chinese art of fat little boys, napping between two plantain leaves. The trousers on the short legs are decorated with the criss-cross stars which crop up on small-scale Qing jades of all kinds - tigers and deer as well as babies. This work, of all in the collection, represents a crowning achievement in colouristic effect: the rust-coloured skin of the pebble forms the large amber leaf that encloses the small white figure.