jade | gemstone

Summary

jade, either of two tough, compact, typically green gemstones that take a high polish. Both minerals have been carved into jewelry, ornaments, small sculptures, and utilitarian objects from earliest recorded times. The more highly prized of the two jadestones is jadeite; the other is nephrite.

Jadeite and nephrite differ in both chemical composition and crystalline structure. Jadeite is a silicate of sodium and aluminum and is classed as a pyroxene. Nephrite is a silicate of calcium and magnesium belonging to the amphibole group of minerals and is properly regarded as tremolite. In both types, the microscopic crystals are tightly interlocked to form a compact aggregate. Both jadestone types may be white or colourless, but colours such as red, green, violet, and gray may occur owing to the presence of iron, chromium, or manganese impurities, respectively. The most highly prized variety is jadeite of an emerald-green hue.

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The two different types of jade, when worked and polished, can usually be distinguished by their appearance alone. The fine lustre of polished nephrite is oily rather than vitreous (glassy), while that of jadeite is the reverse. Some colours are also peculiar to one stone or the other; for example, the popular apple- and emerald-green jewelry jades are invariably jadeite. There are also wide variations of translucency in both stones. The area around the city of Mogaung in northern Myanmar (Burma) has long been the main source of gem-quality jadeite. Occurrences of nephrite are more numerous and geographically more widespread.

Over the course of history, jade has been successively cut and shaped with sandstone, slate, and quartz sand (as an abrasive); by tools made of bronze; by tools of iron, using manually operated lathes; and finally, beginning in the 19th century, by machine-powered lathes, steel saws, and diamond-pointed drills. Carborundum and diamond dust have replaced crushed garnets and corundum (emery) as abrasives.

Both jadestones were worked into implements by Neolithic peoples in many parts of the world. The best-known finds are from the lake dwellings of Switzerland, western France, Central America, Mexico, and China. Jade is hard, tough, and heavy, and it takes and keeps a good edge, while its fine colours and warm polish must have greatly appealed to Neolithic craftsmen. When the stone-based Neolithic cultures were succeeded by ones using bronze and iron, however, jade gradually lost its industrial value and fell from favour as a gemstone in all but a few regions.

Jade and jade carving are associated preeminently with China, since in no other region of the world has this obdurate material been worked with such skill in such a long and unbroken tradition (see Chinese jade). For millennia the jade carved by the Chinese consisted of nephrite from the region of Hotan (Khotan) and Yarkand in what is now Sinkiang. Jadeite does not appear to have been worked by them until the 18th century ce, when large quantities of that jadestone began entering the country from Myanmar via Yunnan province.

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As early as the Neolithic period the Chinese were carving jade into tools and simple cult objects in the form of flat disks with circular orifices at their centre. During the Shang dynasty (1600–1046 bce), they began making small ornamental plaques with decorative designs of animals incised on them in low relief. From the later part of the Zhou dynasty (about 500 bce), the introduction of iron tools made more accomplished carvings possible, and jade began to be made into a wide variety of utilitarian and luxury objects, such as belt hooks and ornaments, sword and scabbard accoutrements, hollow vessels, and, most importantly, sculpture in the round. The craft of jade carving in China attained maturity toward the close of the Zhou dynasty in 256 bce, with designs of unsurpassed excellence and beauty, and the tradition continued for the next 2,000 years.

The reign (1735–96) of the great Qing-dynasty emperor Qianlong was a particularly important period for jade carving. Under his patronage and in those times of exceptional prosperity and luxury, thousands of carved jades were added to the imperial collections, and the material was applied to countless new decorative, ceremonial, and religious uses in the Forbidden City at Beijing and in the homes of nobles and officials. Greater quantities of jade were entering China than ever before, and emerald-green jadeite from Myanmar became as highly esteemed as the finest nephrite from Xinjiang. Fabulous prices were paid for high-quality carvings of people, animals, and plants; bottles, urns, vases, and other vessels; and all sorts of personal accessories.

The Aztecs, Mayas, and other pre-Columbian Indian peoples of Mexico and Central America carved jadeite for use as ornaments, amulets, and badges of rank. Nearly all of these Mesoamerican jades are of various shades of green, with emerald green the most highly prized colour among the Aztecs; their jade carvings comprise plaques, figurines, small masks, pendants, and implements. The appreciation of jade died out in Mesoamerica after the Spanish conquest in the 16th century, however. The source for all Mesoamerican jade is the Motagua Valley in Guatemala.

Until the landing of Europeans there in the 18th century, the Maoris of New Zealand were entirely ignorant of metals, and the most highly prized of their industrial stones was nephrite, from which they made axes, knives, chisels, adzes, and the short swords, or mere, of their chiefs. These jade swords served not only as weapons but as symbols of authority and were usually worked from stone of specially fine colour or distinctive marking.

Several varieties of the mineral serpentine superficially resemble nephrite and are sometimes fraudulently sold as such, but they can be distinguished by their relative softness. Another deceptive practice is that of dyeing colourless pieces of jade green to simulate high-quality stone. The most successful imitations of jadeite are completely artificial and consist of a heavy lead glass that has been cleverly tinted to imitate jadeite’s distinctive apple-green colour.