The carving inverts perfectly to sit on the animals ears and raised haunches. The shallow vessel thus formed may have been used as a wine cup or possibly a brush washer. A recumbent feline with its head similarly resting on its rear haunches and with a similar knobbly spine in the collection of the Museum of Far Eastern Antiquitites, Stockholm was included in Chinese Jade Throughout the Ages and again in Transactions of the Oriental Ceramic Society, 1973-1975, no. 187.