Nicely carved belt hook with an impressive dragon head hook. The material is brown sugar jade. Interesting is the fact that the carver made such a beautiful object from a stone that had a natural crack. He tried to hide this crack in the decoration. This leads us to believe that this may be an early example, so possibly pre-Qing (1644 - 1912) as the supply of good quality jade dwindled at the end of the Ming period (1368 - 1644). However a Qing-date is also well possible. The stud is shaped like a flower which resembles some of the flowers in our flower collection. See flower disc 5 (5407) and the back of flower disc 23 (7880). Acquired from the Shanghai Curio Shop in Shanghai in 2013. Length 9.4 cm. Width 1.6 cm. Depth 2.2 cm. Weight 34.5 grams.