To us it`s a bothersome pest, but to the ancient Chinese, says Muriel Lubliner, a Chicago dealer in antique Oriental art, the cicada was ”a symbol of immortality” and a common theme among artisans. ”I know it was an important decorative motif in the Bronze Age, during the Shang (1500 to 1028 B.C.) and the early Chow dynasties from (1028 to 900 B.C.),” she adds.
”The cicada was also emblematic of eternal youth, because no other insect lives as long as the cicada,” says Lubliner.
She has an unusual collection of some 20 Ch`ing (18th to 19th Century)
silver cicadas of different sizes and widths, from 1 inch to 2 1/2 inches long.
”Chinese ladies wore them as pendants. ”It is just kind of fun to see how they were used. They could be opened and used to hold needles, for the petit-point needlework the ladies used to sew.”
Because ”cicadas have been in the news lately, having emerged en masse from the ground on their once every 17-year cycle, I went to my books on Chinese art, and I found some sketches of cicadas used on other things. I found there were 33 important motifs in the Bronze Age, and one of them was the cicada.”
Her cicadas emerged from the art warehouses of a newly opened China in 1977.
”I was one of the first merchants invited to go through their warehouses,” says Lubliner. ”My belief is nothing exceeds like excess. Anything I liked I bought as many as I could find.”
Her business, the Lubliner Collection, is open to collectors by appointment only. For more information, call 312-337-2222.