The only other abundant source of good jade for the use of Chinese carvers was Burma. This jade was not discovered until the thirteenth century and took until the eighteenth to get to China, whose master carvers very likely were puzzled by its properties. It didn’t work like the stone they knew. It had a different set of characteristics and very different colors. However, it was jade and highly acceptable jade, at that. The long-delayed arrival of jadeite into China had finally come about discount diamond stud earrings.
Jade mining in Burma has not changed much since the days of its discovery. The best deposits were found in the hills north of the Uru River. At these Tawmaw mines, just as had been done in Turkestan, fires were built on the rock face to crack the jade, which could then be split out by hammer and wedge. Quantities of jade were also recovered as boulders in loose rock deposits along and in the Uru River. Frequently this was better material, and undamaged by the mining fires. Most of the Burmese jade mined was—and is—very pale green or whitish, sometimes with rather sizeable bright green splotches. Much more rarely have the coveted solid-green pieces—in emerald and darker shades—been recovered, and even more infrequently some of lavender color.
One of the annoying problems in jade appraisal is the practice of dyeing weak-colored or off-colored jadeite to simulate the best-quality green stones. Sometimes the dyeing is obvious. Cheaper dyes will fade in sunlight in a few days. Under magnification the dye often looks like thin, threadlike lines of color where it is trapped between jade grains but does not penetrate the grains themselves. There are dyeing processes more difficult to detect, and some so clever as to require laboratory detection. Fortunately, these pieces are not so common and are usually limited to smaller carvings. Then, too, the collector is protected somewhat in the United States by rulings of the Federal Trade Commission that such material be labeled “dyed jade.”
For the buyer of jade carvings, there remains an important problem: determining the authenticity of age. Richard Gump, long familiar with the merchandising of jade carvings, gives several guidelines for this in his book on jade. Among his suggestions is this: “The style or design of an object would, generally speaking, indicate the period. Check the exact detail of design. If it is a Han vessel with a Ming or Sung design, you know something is wrong. The material used is a good indicator. If the piece is said to be pre-17 84 and of jadeite, look out. If it is labeled Ch’ien Lung and of distinctive spinach-green Russian jade, which came onto the market in 1920, you would again have due cause for suspicion.” The general trend of these remarks indicates the complexity of authenticating a jade carving and the long and detailed experience necessary for this kind of detective work.
Once a working knowledge of jade characteristics is acquired, another pressing question arises: what are the sources of all the rough material worked by so many different cultures in such great quantities? Until recent times it was actually believed by many scholars that all the jades of ancient Middle America came from China. They certainly couldn’t have come from there, for, astounding as it seems, jade was never found in China proper. All the works of four thousand years of Chinese jade carving were executed in imported stone. There has been much speculation that the earliest carvings were done in native stone and that when these deposits ran out a thriving import trade in rough jade from other sources was begun. Check also round diamond earrings.
Tags: diamonds, gems, jade, jewelry
The evidence now very strongly indicates that the bulk of Chinese jade came from mines in eastern Turkestan, now Sinkiang Province in the west of modern China. There are references to this source in Chinese literature as far back as 200 B.C. The river valleys on the south side of the K’unlun mountains, lying between Tibet and Turkestan, are known to have a number of jade mines that operated for at least two thousand years. Marco Polo made mention in 1272 of jade supplies moving through the nearby city of Khotan. Quantities of broken pebbles and boulders of jade also were found in the river beds draining the same mountain areas. There are other jade deposits further to the west, in the vicinity of Yarkand, and especially at the “jade mountain” within one hundred miles of Yarkand. All of this imported jade was nephrite in white, green (mostly of pale shades), and black. Jade is frequently used for anniversary rings
There was another source of nephrite in Siberia. Although close to the ancient Chinese, it was unknown to them until well into the early 1900’s. These deposits are south of Lake Baikal in Siberia, and they yield a very deep spinach-green nephrite with black inclusions of chromite. Nephrite also occurs there in white or cloudy-green masses. The Russians themselves had made use of it as a decorative stone by the late 1800’s, and some of it had even been carved by such great lapidaries as Carl Peter Faberge.