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Please help me to undertand what's going on here...

Thanks in advance!

An abstraction?
The elephants are suffering because of Chinese forgeries in ivory?
Or just a product of a carver who has no idea of what he is doing. Perhaps imagined from other carved shapes that sell.
These mixed symbols include an obvious distortion of an archaic pig dragon sitting on top of a tuskless elephant.
The elephant is depicted as if bearing a heavy weight.

Thank you!

Hi,

That's a fantasy piece / souvenir made in soft stone.

On top of the elephant is an attempt at copying an Honshang jade figure.

Cheers

fantasy piece. the upper item is a known form, but like many archaic jades its purpose is not entirely clear. Here is a link to a similar (though not I don't think genuine) item: http://www.asianart.com/phpforum/pictures/22345_dragoncoiled[1].jpg

These are small pieces, however, maybe an inch or slightly larger in diameter. They never appeared on top of elephants. Your elephant has eyes that resemble some large bronzes found in the mid 1980s in a Sichuan horde at Sanxingdui (eg: http://thumbs.dreamstime.com/z/gold-bronze-statue-sanxingdui-sichuan-china-7391639.jpg).

I imagine that the fellow that dreamed your object up used a similar eye shape on the elephant to suggest antiquity, but I'm unaware of any connection between the archaic jade forms atop your elephant and the Sanxingdui bronze culture.

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