Thumb ring

Worked in light-green jadeite with bright green patches on the surface, this ring is a thick cylinder with a sloping shoulder and a flat bottom.
The ancient character she, used for an archer's ring, the prototype of this form, is composed of two radicals, the left representing leather and the right, a roundel, shares the pronunciation of the word for "shooting." Ancient archers' rings were leather wrapped around the thumb that drew the bowstring back to shoot an arrow. Early examples made of jade, bone, or horn were wider at one opening than at the other and often had two holes for fastening them to the finger. The fastening is shown in the earliest jade archer's ring discovered in a late Shang tomb in Henan (Zgyqqj 1993, vol. 2, plate 111). Very soon jade rings were being produced in many forms and decorated with elaborate motifs. Modern scholars believe that they were too splendid to have been used and that perhaps they functioned as personal ornaments. No archaeological evidence has been found of jade rings from the Tang through the Yuan period. In the Ming period, jade rings were created in two new types. One was a straight-walled band with a rectangular setting on the top(Zgyqqj 1993, vol. 5, plate 218). The other was a slit ring with a top setting inlaid with jade on a gold or silver shank (Shanghai Museum 1985, 541; Zgyqqj 1993, vol. 5, plate 218). Both developed rapidly in varied intricate forms during the Qing period. Thick-walled thumb rings like the one shown here were a modified version of ancient archer rings preserved by the nomadic Manchus, who loved hunting on horseback. Whether such rings were made of jade, gemstone, ceramic, or metal, Manchu noblemen wore them on their right or both thumbs for display.