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Jade Jewelry
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Jade, jade bangle,
jade beads, jade
bracelets, jade
Buddha, jade carving,
jade diamond, jade
dragon, jade
earrings, jade.
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- Jade
jewelry are beautiful pieces of jewel much in demand
by Chinese people.
Jade jewelry in
the high price range is imperial green with a
high translucent level. Actually the more
translucent jade jewelry is the higher is the price
they fetch.
Jade jewelry come
in various forms, shapes and qualities. Jade
bangles,
jade bracelet or jade bracelets, jade carving, jade
rings, jade earrings and jade pendants are often
bought to give the body of a lady the special touch.
A jade Buddha
is usually placed in the house to bring good luck,
sometimes together with a jade dragon. Jade gemstone
is extremely hard and bought not only to make some
great pieces of jade jewelry out of it, but also as
a investment. A good jade necklace, a beautiful jade
carving and the real imperial jade wont loose
value over time, its somehow like gold, but not as
easy to sell.
The kings of Burma or Myanmar gave
jade jewelry as presents to foreigners. The real
jade city is Mogaung in upper Myanmar or Burma.
Since about the 14.century almost all jade comes
from the jade mines of this area, it looks that this
also has something to do with the expression
"Chinese Jade" because this area was also
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sometimes in the
past a part of China. But after some time the whole Jade area of
today upper Myanmar fell back to Myanmar or Burma.Jade or jadeite
goes optically very well together with diamonds,
opals and peridot. A beautiful jade necklace is hard
to beat
maybe complemented by some excellent jade
rings, jade beads carefully selected and put
together as a necklace is sheer beauty.
Jade jewelry show subdued elegance and good taste Jade pendants are
very popular especially with a beautiful carved jade.
About jade many has been written since ancient times
and the history of jade provides an interesting
illustration of the creation by a refined and
luxurious society with green jade jewelry as a
symbol of wealth.
The white jade or
nephrite mined at the original Jade Mountain at
Kun Lun in South-East Turkistan from about 2000
years ago possessed all the qualifications required.
It was beautiful and rare; it could be obtained only
with lots of trouble and its fashioning into jewelry
was very difficult due to the extreme hardness
of jade stone.
In the original jade
mines in Turkistan a certain rather small amount
of green jadeite was also found. Since this amount of
jade with this special green color, afterwards
called imperial jade, was extremely rare this green
jade stone became practically priceless. Because of the
influence of metallic oxides in establishing the
jade's color, many attempts were made to fake this
valuable green by such |

Green Jade Jewelry
and some more redundancy on
jade jewelry, black jade
jewelry, bracelet jewelry,
bracelets, bracelets
jewelry, carved jade
jewelry, Chinese jade
jewelry. fine jade jewelry. |
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Fine
Jade Jewelry |
various methods
like burying copper in contact with blocks of white
nephrite. With the adoption of
jade symbols for the State worship of the Heaven,
Earth and the `Four Quarters', jade became for the
Chinese a similar value as gold in the West
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Jade Burmese everywhere, it was a jewelers dream ...

Jade Burmese at the emporium at Yangon |
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White and green jade
necklace plus carved. |
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slabs of jade
of different colors
and sizes, shining star sapphires, luscious golden pearls,
rare pigeon’s blood rubies and Rough jade blocks ranged from a small 2 kg rock of a
remarkable deep green prized Imperial jade valued at a
staggering US$400,000 to a two-ton boulder of light green
jade lined with dark green veins at a reserve price of
US$200,000.
On special jade shops all kind of jade jewelry
like jade bangle, jade pendant, jade
necklace, jade ring and carved jade was
available
The occasion, the
Myanmar Gems, Jade and
Pearl
plus
Jewelry Fair held
at the Myanmar Gems Emporium Hall in Yangon twice per year.
Six-hundred and twenty-six gem merchants
representing 227 companies from fifteen
countries attended the fair to inspect and buy at auction the astonishing
variety of gems, jade and pearls on display. |
Jade jewelry jade bangle jade pendant jade necklace
jade ring and slabs of jade
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Myanmar Jade Shop
with Jade bangle- jade bracelets- jade
earrings- jade necklace |
The hall held treasures to dazzle
even non-experts. Jade in pebble form, for jewelry or rock took over the
ground floor corridors of the hall and the sprawling outdoor
compound.
Even the pillars of the hall, built in 1993, were
built entirely of small jade tiles! Everywhere jade shops
are offering all kind of jade jewelry.
Since the days of the ancient Burmese kings, foreign
traders and merchants have been drawn by the country’s
superb gems. The story goes that the first French gem
merchants were astounded by the quality of some Nga Mauk
rubies and declared them to be priceless.
The awe of the French gem traders is
best captured in a magnificent mural that
decorates the lobby of the Gems Emporium
Hall. The
mural features miners at work, treasure chests and salvers
filled with |
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precious stones and kings and noblemen
displaying rubies to foreign visitors who are wide-eyed with
a
amazement. Standing tall in the middle of it all is a
bejeweled queen representing Mother Myanmar sprinkling eugenia sprigs as a sign of welcome.
The
esteem for
Myanmar jade for jade
jewelry continues to this day. For this
reason, hundreds of visitors arrive each
year in Yangon to participate in the gems
fair first held in 1964 and which is now
held twice annually, in March and October.

Jade Jewelry Necklace |
Many reference books on gems
acknowledge Myanmar to be the
foremost producer of first-class
rubies, sapphires and jade. Indeed,
the world’s commercial quantities of
jade are now believed to come only
from Myanmar actually almost all
jade for jade jewelry come from
Myanmar or Burma.
There are two kinds of jade. Jadeite, which is
considered superior because of its
clarity and nephrite, ismined in
Myanmar at Mogaung and other sites
in Kachin. It is said that
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Jade
Jewelry |
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jade was so abundant that chunks of
the precious stone were used by Shan noble
families as door-stoppers! They smeared the
jade blocks with water, “…to bring out the color
and its intensity”, explained a jeweler from
Hong Kong, examined stones with a flashlight
to check for cracks and a magnifying glasses
to study gems for inclusions. The vast
majority of visitors came from Asia
including Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, |
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Singapore and Thailand. Jade was
the main attraction. Said a buyer from Taiwan: “I am only
here to look at jade, because my customers back home prefer
it to other gemstones”. Explaining the Chinese partiality
for jade, he added: “The Chinese believe that jade is a living stone; its color deepens as it is worn over time.”
The fondness for jade and jade jewelry stems from an old Chinese legend which
tells how an ancient king was once cured of an illness by
wearing a jade stone. So many Chinese like to wear jade
because of its alleged protective and curative powers.
The fair is divided into two sections. The
ground floor features displays of uncut as well as
cut and polished gems and jade as well as jewelry
pieces —sapphire, ruby or jade rings, jade jewelry,
earrings, bracelets and pearls set in gold, with or
without diamonds. There are inexpensive pieces for
sale such as jadeite rings for US$1 baroque jade
pieces for US$3, jade bracelets for US$30 and for
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Jade for Jade Jewelry |
the indulgent, jade
chopsticks at US$80.00 a pair. There are more expensive
pieces of course, US$3,500 for an exquisite jade tea set
consisting of a pot, six cups and a tray, splendid jade
carvings from simple animal figurines to more complex Buddha
images. There are ruby cabochon rings set in 18-carat gold
going from US$100, sapphire rings from US$150 and pearl
rings from US$90. For those with larger budgets there are
ruby-encrusted gold pens for US$2,000.
All gems and jewelry on the ground floor may be bought
over the counter from the vendors who represent joint
ventures
between private companies and the government. Items on
display are of good quality and feature surprisingly
contemporary designs. Authenticity is assured and a
certificate for customs clearance is issued with every
purchase. All told, 129 lots of gems, 38 lots of jade, 5,705
jewelry pieces and 5,261 pieces of jade carving valued at
US$4.16 million were available for sale over the counter.
The second floor features gems, pearls, jade stones and
carvings exhibited by government-owned mines and sold only
by auction. In a competitive bidding process sealed bids are
received for each lot and the highest bid over the reserve
price wins the particular order. Some gems were so coveted
that the bid was several times the reserve price! A single
imperial jade semi-cut piece for instance, weighing 66.1
grams with a reserve price of US$3,500 sold for US$10,001.
Auctioning began at a slow pace in the morning of the
first day but in the afternoon, the pace quickened.
There was still much examining of the gems every time a lot
was called for bids. A mind-boggling 339 lots of gems, 621
lots of jade and 120 lots of pearl valued at a total of
US$18.6 million were put up for auction. Not all lots
received bids. The percentage of gems and jewelry
successfully auctioned off varies from fair to fair.
Emporiums turnovers are up to US$ 15 million, twice per
year. It is estimated that some 60 to 80 per cent of all
lots on display are sold at each Emporium.
Said a jade merchant from Hong Kong who was on his
15th visit to the Myanmar Gems Emporium, “Myanmar is the
only place where you can find jade in such quantities. Some
years, I have found really good quality jade at reasonable
prices; other times, I couldn’t find anything I liked or the
prices were too high. But I have to come here every year
anyway to see what’s in the
market.”
Despite some reservations about price, most of the
visitors to the Myanmar Gems Emporium agree on one thing,
the gems are of superior quality to those found elsewhere
and many gem dealers and jewelers are willing to pay the
price.
- 7000 years of Chinese jade
Jade for jewelry has been prized by the
Chinese for over seven thousand years as the most precious
of all materials, and has been believed to possess
near-magical properties. Its enduring and ageless surface
texture came to be associated with immortality, while its
abstract qualities represented a pinnacle of simplicity and
elegance of design for jewelry. No other culture has valued jade
for jewelry or any
other material for such a length of time, nor indeed
accorded any material such literary and philosophical
attention. From the middle of the Zhou period (1050-256 BC)
onwards, the physical qualities of the jade for jewelry stone have served as
a metaphor to describe the human soul. According to an
ancient text, the Zhou Li, dating to about the fourth
century BC:
Anciently superior men found the likeness of all excellent
qualities in jade in particular for jewelry. Soft, smooth and glossy, it appeared to
them like benevolence; fine, compact and strong, like
intelligence ... its flaws not concealing its beauty, nor
its beauty its flaws, like loyalty; with internal radiance
issuing from it on every side, like good faith. (1)
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In a later text (c. 280-233 BC), the Han Feizi, there is a
story about a man called Bian He, who presented an uncut
jade to two succeeding kings, neither of whom believed that
the rough boulder really contained jade and had his feet
amputated as a punishment. He cried out in despair,
explaining: 'I am lamenting not the loss of my feet but for
the calling a precious gem an ordinary stone and for the
dubbing of an honest man a liar.' The treasure inside was
then extracted and polished; the moral of the story is still
quoted today to illustrate how hard it can be for some
people to recognize excellence when it is hidden under a
rough exterior. (2) Joseph Hotung, who has been collecting
jades for over thirty years now, has agreed to allow his
jades to be |
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From June to September the British Museum displayed an
exhibition of jades jewelry from the collection of Sir Joseph Hotung.
This proved a very popular exhibition, and the British
Museum is very fortunate that it is now able to devote a
whole gallery to Chinese jade, which opened in November
2002. We are delighted that Sir exhibited on a long term loan basis.
The jades are on in
the gallery,
room 33B, leading directly off the Hotung Gallery of Oriental Antiquities. This gallery
is called the Selwyn and Ellie Alleyne Gallery, after the
couple who generously funded the refurbishment of
the space. This means that there is now a gallery in
the British Museum dedicated to Chinese jade, a
material which has been associated with the Chinese
since Neolithic times and prized by them above the
gold and gems we rank so highly in the West.
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Sir Joseph's jades are augmented by a few private
loans and British Museum jades, together with some
comparative material in other media. Jade is still highly
prized by the Chinese and we are also showing some
twentieth-century pieces to illustrate the fact that good
contemporary jade carving still exists in China today.
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Jade is a hard and exceptionally tough material, and one
line of research is concerned with the manner in which it
has been worked and the development of jade carving
techniques since Neolithic times. For this reason, at the
same time as planning this exhibition, we have also
instituted a project in collaboration with our scientific
research department. They are conducting an investigation,
using optical and scanning electron microscopy, to ascertain
different techniques of carving by examining the minute tool
marks left on the jades. We hope this will allow a relative
chronology for the development of jade carving to be
established, perhaps establishing a link between 'style' of
carving and 'technology'. The results should also help to
establish the date at which objects were carved, a frequent
problem in the study of jades. My colleague, Margaret Sax,
who is in charge of this project will describe this work
later in the article. |

Carved Chinese Jade |
When we exhibited Sir Joseph's jades,
including carved jade objects in 1995,
I wrote about some of the early pieces in APOLLO,
(3) so this time I will focus on some later jades.
Sir Joseph's collection of jade, with the exception
of a few newly acquired pieces, is illustrated and
discussed in great depth by Jessica Rawson in the
catalogue printed originally in 1995, which has
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Carved Chinese Jade 1 |
been reprinted especially for this new exhibition.
(4) The
exhibition is laid out in a chronological fashion along one
wall of the gallery, with various highlights picked out in
three cases on the other side: they include a case on the
Neolithic culture of the Liangzhu, another devoted to
animals and humans from the Han dynasty to the present and a
third on the pictorial quality of later jades. (5)
The section on later jades in the chronological part of the
display features a jade belt set for a man and a pendant
set, probably for a lady. In the post-Han period, jade was
widely used for personal ornaments, such as pendants, belt,
dress and hair ornaments, jewelry and small objects to
hang about the person. In the earlier period of Chinese
history, jade played a pivotal
role in ceremony and ritual. However, in this later period
its significance in such contexts gradually diminished, and
it was more important for worldly display than display to
spirits in the tombs.
Belt sets were introduced to China from the Steppe area.
Gold, silver and gilt bronze examples, comprising a variety
of plaques and a buckle section first appeared in the third
and fourth centuries AD. These designs were simplified in
jade: round or shaped plaques were cut square; openwork or
pierced and relief designs were cut as incised lines or
simple relief on a flat surface. The constraints imposed by
jade as a material did not, however, inhibit its use.
By the
Tang dynasty, jade was established at the summit of a
hierarchy of materials for belts. Such emphasis on jade was
probably in part a consequence of the Tang imperial family's
interest in Daoism. Within religious Daoism, jade was used
to describe many aspects of the immortal worlds. Once
established as the primary material for belts, jade remained
at the top of the hierarchy in subsequent dynasties. During
the time of our exhibition, 'Gilded Dragons, 1999: Buried
treasures from Ancient China', I wrote in APOLLO, about jade
belts and various other ornaments which we borrowed from
China at that time. (6)
The Tang dynasty complete belt set, belonging to Sir Joseph Hotung, is undecorated; it would
have been worn as an indication of rank as stipulated by the
regulations of the time, and--since Chinese robes did not
have pockets--would have had various implements, including
knives, suspended from it. However, it was also very popular
during the Tang dynasty, a period of great exoticism in
China, when the Silk Route was at its height and there were
many foreigners at the imperial court, to decorate such jade
plaques with scenes of foreign musicians playing their
instruments, and one of these is illustrated here.
Other jades of the Tang or Liao periods, ninth-tenth
century, could also be linked with Daoism. A pair of elegant
earrings in a brilliant pure white jade are of the
luminous quality feted by contemporary poets, but such
flying angel figures could be regarded as either Buddhist
angels (apsarases) or perhaps jade maidens, inhabitants of
the immortal heavens of the
Daoist cosmos, where such beings were attendants on the
Queen Mother of the West. The stylistic character of the
earrings reflects both the influence of Central Asian forms
introduced to China from kingdoms further west and their
origins in a metal prototype, evident from the fine open
work and delicate, incised lines.
For aristocratic and rich ladies, hair ornaments, bracelets
and earrings were important accoutrements, and I illustrated
several in the APOLLO article of 1999. (7) In the case,
together with the man's belt set, we are showing a pendant
set, with illustrations clarifying how ladies wore them. We
know, however, from various texts of the Tang period that
such pendants were worn by both sexes, and that they were
symbols of rank. They were prevalent from the Six Dynasties
period (265-589 AD) onwards. The color of the jade
indicated to which rank its wearer belonged. Thus, the first
rank officials wore mountain-dark jade, while others above
the fifth rank wore water-green pendants. These ornaments
were obviously used both in life and then taken to the grave
to show the bureaucrats of the underworld their wearers'
status in the hereafter. The Chinese have traditionally
always been very concerned with hierarchy and status. Even
in the Han dynasty (206 BC-220 AD), they were taking
mortgage deeds with them to the afterlife to prove to the
officials there that they owned the entitlement to the land
on which they were buried. These pendants sets of jade are
illustrated on figures such as those found in the Tang
dynasty tomb of Princess Yongtai and other tomb murals.
Apparently part of the purpose of these sets was also to
weigh down the hem of the skirt to prevent it from
fluttering in the wind when walking. (8)
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During the
Han dynasty, Chinese ideas about immortality had
undergone fundamental changes. Notions about the underworld
and paradises to which the dead might go were modified, such
new beliefs being known as religious Daoism, an indigenous
Chinese religion. The dead were no longer thought to live
primarily in their tombs, but rather to go to an afterlife
in paradise, so models, rather than the real things, were
now placed with them and precious objects were no longer
buried. Jade became closely linked with the Taoist search
for immortality and the Taoist paradises were described as
being luminous like translucent jade, and filled with jade
immortals and animals. The belief that eating powdered jade
would help mortals to reach these miraculous realms, as well
as other similar beliefs, became prevalent. (9) |
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Prior to this period
jade
vessels
were probably a rarity ,because of the wastage involved in their manufacture and the
difficulties involved in carving thin, curved walls but jade
pendants were in fashion.
However, during the Tang dynasty some jade vessels were made
which copied foreign gold or silver shapes, partly in an
attempt to assist those who sought immortality through
drinking or eating from such precious jade vessels. They
were obviously very luxurious, and ownership implied great
wealth and status. Many such metal vessels had been used in
Buddhist ceremonies, having been introduced to China by the
non-Chinese rulers of northern China during the Six
Dynasties period. They were gradually adopted into secular
usage by the aristocrats and elite of the Tang period. Cups
in jade were thus linked with a search for immortality
assisted by jade. The Hejiacun hoard featured in our
exhibition 'Gilded Dragons'
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Singapore
Marina
Bay Sands Lavalier Jewelry Shop
at Tower 3 |
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included several vessels in gold
and silver, (10) whose shape is similar to that of this
lobed dish in jade (Fig. 3). The prototypes perhaps
originated further west in Iran, in gold and silver and
occasionally in glass. (11) Probably by the time this jade
cup was crafted its foreign origins were already obscure. As
with the belts and the jewelry, the choice of jade was
both a mark of high standing within the Chinese scale of
values and probably also an indication of a concern with
immortality, as drinking from a jade cup would transfer some
of the precious, immortal essence of jade to the drinker. |
Sumptuary laws in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries
required that only certain people were allowed to use jade
vessels, but many disregarded these rules and most of the
surviving jade vessels and numerous jade ornaments date to
the Ming (1368-1644) and Qing (1644-1911) periods.
There are four main categories of later jade vessels:
vessels copying silver or gold forms, as mentioned above;
vessels based on ancient bronzes and jades; undecorated cups
and bowls in porcelain shapes; and cups with flower like
bodies or handles.
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In the new Alleyne gallery,
we are showing examples of all the above
types of vessels. From the Song period
(970-1279) the emperors, partly in order to
bolster their legitimacy, printed catalogues
of the imperial art collections. The Chinese
had of course invented printing, and used
moveable type printing from the Song period
onwards. From the Ming period, the
widespread use of such books with woodblock
illustrations affected the manufacture of
all types of utensils. These books
circulated images of famous paintings,
calligraphy and antiquities, as well as
designs for such utensils as ink cakes and
ink stones. As a result, forms and
decorations developed in one material were
readily copied in another. Jade carvers, no
less than craftsmen working in other media,
were inspired in this way.
During the mid- to later
Qing period, the Chinese controlled
the area along the trade routes
to Khotan and Yarkand from which most of their jade now
came. Many larger vessels were made in this later period in
imitation of archaic shapes, originally associated with
bronze. The collection of antique bronzes belonging to the
Qianlong Emperor (1736-95) was published in the Xi Qing
gujian. (12) A Qing dynasty covered vessel (Fig. 5), in the
shape of an archaic bronze fang yi, dates to the eighteenth
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century. It reproduces in jade a
rectangular section (fang yi) vessel of the Shang or early
Western Zhou. (13)
This large, circular, spinach-green brush jade pot, is
characteristic of the much greater size of jades of the
later period, when it had become more easily obtainable. The
most famous of these larger jades is the boulder in Beijing,
in the Forbidden City, which portrays the mythical Emperor
Yu controlling the floods. It was found in 1778 and was a
phenomenal piece weighing 5,350 kilograms and measuring 224
centimeters in height. It was transported to Beijing in a
specially reinforced
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wagon; the journey is estimated to have
taken three years. A jade craftsman was
chosen to create a three-dimensional model
of Yu controlling the floods, from a
painting in an ancient Song dynasty
catalogue. (14) |
This brushpot typifies the pictorial quality characteristic
of so many later vessels, which were often worked as if the
surface of the jade were a sheet of paper or a scroll to be
unrolled. The brushpot is decorated with scenes of rice
cultivation and the stacking of sheaves--scenes of farm
life. These two scenes can be directly compared with images
from the set of pictures conventionally used to illustrate
rice growing and sericulture, known as the Gengzhi tu, as
shown in the print reproduced here from an imperial album
the British Museum has in its possession (Fig. 7). The
figures are not placed in exactly the same positions in the
print and parts of the scenes have been omitted from the
brushpot, as some of the painted elements would have been
difficult to reproduce in a jade carving, even one made by
as consummate a master as the one responsible for this
piece, but it is a fairly faithful translation of its
prototype, as is also the case with the carving on the other
side). (15)
Both sides of this rectangular screen are carved
with mountainous landscape scenes, a setting for the Eight
Immortals,
legendary
figures within Daoist folklore, and the God of Longevity,
Shou Xing. The Eight Immortals are said to have lived at
different periods and to have attained immortality through
an understanding of Nature's secrets. They are divided into
opposed pairs, each of which represents the two sides of a
different condition of mankind: poverty, wealth, age, youth,
male, female and so on. They all have identifiable
attributes. (16) Again, the whole composition is treated
like a painting or printed image and was probably based on a
particular woodblock illustration, such as that from the
Fang shi mopu. (17)
The old man holding a fan seated on the top of the tower and
platform is Zhongli Quan, the leader of the Eight. Next to
him is He Xiangu, holding a peach; and the third figure is
Li Tieguai, holding a gourd, from which there rises a long
streamer of mist; he is
always depicted as an emaciated
beggar, leaning on a stick. On the ground to the left of the
tower stand four further figures. Reading from left to
right, they are: Cao Guojiu, holding a pair of castanets;
Zhang Guolao, holding the yu gu, a musical instrument in the
shape of a bamboo tube with two rods to beat it; Lu Dongbin,
carryiung a fly-brush and his emblem, a sword; and Han
Xiangzi, the patron of musicians, playing a flute. The
eighth immortal is Lan Caihe, generally regarded as a woman,
but sometimes shown as a boy, and seen here on the extreme
right, carrying the customary emblem of a basket of flowers.
Above the whole scene, mounted on a flying crane, is Shou
Xing, the God of Longevity.
As mentioned earlier, establishing the date at which jade
objects were carved has so far proved problematical; by
contrast, in the case of ceramics thermoluminescence tests
have been used for many years. What follows is an account by
my colleague in the Scientific Research Department of the
British Museum, Margaret Sax, of the work she is doing to
try and remedy this situation with regard to jade.
The scientific study of jade follows the successful outcome
of an investigation into the methods used to engrave the
curved sides of hard stone, quartz cylinder seals in
Mesopotamia. These were produced in Mesopotamia and the
surrounding areas of the Near East from about 3000-400 BC.
Having surveyed the seal intaglios by binocular microscopy,
we developed a methodology to study the fine detail of the
tool marks using a scanning electron microscope (SEM).
Detailed impressions of the marks were made with silicone
dental resin, and then the moulds were gold-coated so that
they were electrically conducting and could be examined and
recorded in the high vacuum chamber of the SEM. The
characteristics of the tool marks preserved on the seals
were compared with tool marks produced experimentally, using
a range of techniques, tools and abrasive materials. The
method of moulding is particularly advantageous for the
study of jade because it allows the deeply carved parts of
an object that are difficult to view directly to be
examined. These less accessible features would have also
been difficult to smooth and polish and often preserve the
original tool marks.
In the initial stage of the study, we examined several jades
dated stylistically to one of three broad periods in Chinese
history, the Neolithic Hongshan and Liangzhu cultures
(fourth-third millennia BC), (18) the Western and Eastern
Zhou dynasties (eleventh-third centuries BC) and the Ming
and Qing dynasties from the sixteenth to the nineteenth
century. This has enabled the use of several different
techniques of carving to be identified. All are abrasive
processes. Howard Hansford described the abrasive powders
that were being used by Beijing jade carvers in 1939. (19)
These included quartz, garnet and emery which were mixed
with water to make a slurry and applied with rotary tools,
such as wheels and drills, as well as non-rotary files.
Hansford also referred to the use of hand-held pointed tools
for engraving inscriptions.
To illustrate the information
that can be obtained from objects like those described here,
we focus on the tool marks found on a flower and cicada
ornament, dated to the Ming or the Qing dynasty, which is a mere nine
centimeters high. The overall dimensions of the
ornament suggest it was worked from a small slab of jade,
about nine millimeters thick. Tool marks relating to the
shaping of the undulating surfaces forming the flower and
the cicada survive on the highly decorated front and rear
faces. The SEM micrograph (Fig. 9)--the scale bars in this
and Figs. 10-11 represent 2 mm--is of a mould taken from the
surface of the cicada's wing. Our engraving experiments
indicated that the fine parallel grooves seen here are
typical of those carved using an abrasive slurry with a
disc-shaped rotary wheel. An iron or steel wheel was
probably mounted on a lathe and rotated by a foot treadle,
similar perhaps to the one depicted in a seventeenth century
woodblock print, included by Sun and Sun in their
translation of T'ien Kung K'ai-Wu. (20) Another SEM
micrograph (Fig. 10) shows the incised decoration on the
cicada's wing. The curvature of these features, protruding
upwards on this mould, indicates they were carved using a
very small wheel.
The tool marks molded from a hole pierced through the
cicada's wing suggest how pierced
features on this and other objects, such as the Tang or Liao
earrings (Fig. 2), may have been worked. The SEM micrograph
(Fig. 11) shows two distinct features which extend through
the thickness of the ornament. On the left, the feature has
circumferential grooves, demonstrating that it was worked
with a solid drill, about one millimeter in diameter. In
contrast, the even narrower features on the right are
characterized by faint longitudinal grooves, consistent with
the use of a saw to enlarge the drilled hole, in the manner
of a fretsaw.
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Our
examination of this ornament and several
other jade jewelry has
provided evidence for the use of rotary tools during the
Ming and Qing dynasties. However, different characteristics
are present on some of the earlier jades, for example, the
plaque of a face veil (Fig. 13), dated to the
Eastern Zhou
dynasty, 770-475 BC. Molded details of the
stylized dragon
incised on the front can be seen in the SEM micrograph (Fig.
14), in which the scale bar represents 5 mm. The
characteristics of the tool marks here show that several
different hand-held tools were used in the carving. The
generally uneven nature of the marks on the plaque contrast
with the even working of the flower and cicada ornament. The
present scientific study is beginning to
provide evidence for the techniques by which
this extraordinarily tough material was painstakingly shaped, carved and polished
using abrasive processes to reveal the hidden qualities that
were recognized in the raw stone by Bian He. |

Jade Jewelry |
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Despite the fact that the process of producing jades was
extremely time-consuming and labor intensive, the many
thousands of jade ritual and ornamental objects that have
been made by the Chinese amply testify to the great symbolic
and material worth this material held and indeed still holds
for them. |
(1) J. Legge, edited with introduction and study guide by
Ch'u Chai and Winberg Chai, Li Chi, Book of Rites: An
Encyclopaedia of Ancient Ceremonial Usages, Religous Creeds
and Social Institutions, 2 vols., New York, 1967, vol. II,
p. 464.
(2) See Wenbo, 1993, no. 2, pp. 47-52, and R. Gump, Jade:
Stone of Heaven, New York, 1962, pp. 172-75.
(3) Carol Michaelson, 'Some early Chinese jades in the
Hotung Collection and the British Museum', APOLLO vol. CXLI,
no. 396 (February 1995), pp. 11-15.
(4) J. Rawson, Chinese Jade from the Neolithic to the Qing,
London, 1995. I am greatly indebted to Professor Dame
Jessica Rawson for the opportunity of working on the
exhibition and catalogue in 1995, and for her inspiration
and help in my work at the British Museum before and since
that time.
(5) See Michaelson, op. cit.
(6) Eadem, 'Gilded dragons: Buried treasures from China's
Golden Ages', APOLLO, vol. CL, no. 453 (November 1999), pp.
43-46.
(7) Ibid., pp. 43-46
(8) See Liu Yunhui, BeiZhou Sui, Tang Jingyi Yuqi, Chongqing,
2000, p. 32; see also Zhou Xun and Gao Chunming, 5000 Years
of Chinese Costumes, San Francisco, 1987, p. 121.
(9) See Rawson, op, cit., pp. 79-85.
(10) Carol Michaelson, Gilded dragons: Buried treasure from
China's Golden Ages, exh. cat., British Museum, pp. 104-29,
no. 70.
(11) Jiro Harada, Catalogue of Treasures in the Imperial
repository, Tokyo, 1932, plate L111.
(12) See J. Rawson (ed.), The British Museum Book of Chinese
Art, London, 1992, p. 64.
(13) See Rawson, op. cit., p. 399; in the new exhibition, an
archaic bronze prototype of the same shape is shown
alongside the Qing dynasty vessel.
(14) See F. Ward, 'Jade: Stories of heaven', National
Geographic Magazine, vol. CLXXII, no. 3 (September 1987), p.
294; and Craig Clunas in Zhang Hong Xing, The Qianlong
Emperor: Treasures from the Forbidden City, exh. cat.,
National Museum of Scotland, Edinburgh, 2002, preface, p.
14.
(15) Rawson, op cit., pp. 406-409.
(16) Wolfram Eberhard, A dictionary of Chinese Symbols:
Hidden Symbols in Chinese Life and Thought, London and New
York, 1986, pp. 91-93.
(17) Rawson, op. cit., p. 404.
(18) See n. 3 above.
(19) Sidney Howard Hansford, Chinese Jade Carving, London
and Bradford, 1950.
(20) E-Tu Zen Sun and Shiou-Chuan Sun, Chinese Technology in
the Seventeenth Century, University Park, PA, and London,
1996, p 306, fig. 18-7.
Carol Michaelson is an Assistant Keeper in the Department of
Asia at the British Museum. Her research interests include
Chinese jades and early Chinese material. She is currently
co-ordinating the digitisation of the Department's Dunhuang
and related material collected by Sir Marc Aurel Stein, a
project funded by the Andrew Mellon Foundation.
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She was responsible for the Selwyn and Ellie Alleyne Gallery of
Chinese Jade, which opened in November 2002. Currently she
is writing a book on Chinese jade, and working with the
British Museum's scientific research department on a project
analysing ancient lapidary skills related to jade working.
Margaret Sax is a special assistant in the Department of
Conservation, Documentation and Science at the British
Museum. She has specialised for many years in research into
ancient lapidary techniques and is now focussing on the
carving of Chinese jade.
COPYRIGHT Apollo Magazine Ltd. and Gale Group
Thailand's Chantaburi the
the trading place in Asia
for precious and semi precious stones plus jade. |
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