Jade
So much has been written about jade that it should be one of the best publicized and best understood of all the gemstones that are used for gemstone rings. On the contrary, most of what has been written as fact has been embedded in reams of speculation, guesswork, fantasy, fiction, and pure invention, so that jade remains a great mystery. Of course, a gemstone with a continuous popular history running through more than four thousand years is bound to accumulate a voluminous body of confusing lore. This is especially so with gem material that has been put to use for utilitarian, economic, political, and religious purposes along the way.
Jade has become what it is in history, legend, and gemology as a direct result of its inherent characteristics. Consistently, publications about jade dwell on its mystical and potent powers, and on the reverence with which it has been regarded by the Chinese. Actually, the gemstone needs none of this, because its characteristics alone can explain its exalted position. It is very interesting that even today an exquisite Chinese carving, having all the appropriate mystical symbolism, will suddenly lose its magic and market value when it is discovered to be executed in one of the very similar—almost indistinguishable—natural substitutes and not in true jade.
The facts about jade took gemologists a long time to assemble. A good part of the problem lay in the definition of jade. It was so broad that the name—or its equivalent—has been applied to several mineral substances with grossly different characteristics.