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Subject:Re: Small jade tray
Posted By: Super Mon, Dec 07, 2020
Hi, Mark:
Yes, for some reasons, most of the jade items for sales in Mr. Hoffman's site are indeed low quality items and he does have much much better Qing dynasty Hetain jade pieces in his private collection and he had sold a few of them to me. I just regret that I did not buy a few more pieces from him a while ago. Jade collecting is not a cheap hobby and sometime it can be hazardous. Interestingly, Mr. Hoffman did not want to appraise any jade carvings based on pictures alone although he is very knowledgeable because he said it was difficult enough to appraise jade pieces in person, it would be unfair to appraise them with pictures (sometime low resolution) alone. He also said he had not really encountered too many archaic jade pieces with 100% certainty. That shows you it is really a BIG gamble for any of us jade collectors try to buy any so called archaic or Neolithic jade pieces. We may be better off just focus in nice Republican or late Qing dynasty Hetain jade pieces. Interesting, jadeite, although is now accepted as one of the two credible jade materials (beside nephrite) it was not considered to be "jade" until the middle Qing dynasty. Therefore, if we ever see a jade piece labeled as Ming dynasty jadeite piece, better run with your money.
I had not run by my modern nephrite jade brush washer with Mr. Hoffman because like I just said before he would refuse to render any opinion based on pictures alone. I did test the S.G. and MOH hardness of my three jade brush washers including the one posted here, and all three are indeed made of nephrite albeit they did not look that great (one other piece is much better) Now the problem with using S.G. and MOH hardness tests to confirm if the material of a "jade" piece is nephrite, IMHO, is highly questionable and not 100% accurate. It is because the Western definition of "jade" only if it was made of nephrite or jadeite is simply too narrow and confining. Many archaic jade carvings were made of material that were neither nephrite or jadeite, yet to be called "jade" by the Chinese definition, the material must be "stones that are BEAUTIFUL" and those that possess the "Five virtues of a gentleman" (You can probably still find some of the posting regarding these five virtues of jade posted by me in this forum a while ago as Bill). Also nephrite's often being called "soft jade" is really not 100% correct since there are indeed high quality Hetain nephrite jade with a MOH hardness very close to 7 (higher than some jadeite) and with a S.G. of around 3.0. On the other side, if we would call any stones with a S.G. of 2.86-2.96 and with a MOH hardness of 5.5-6.5 as nephrite, then we may run into a lot of problems. That is because I had tested at least a few thousand pieces of jade carvings, rocks, slabs, etc. with very precise equipment, then found some of the Chinese pieces that were made of Dushan jade did have a S.G. and hardness high enough to be labeled as "nephrite" but they were really not nephrite.
Therefore, IMHO, we really cannot and SHOULD NOT define authentic jade pieces as only those that were made of either jadeite or nephrite. Also, it may not be a great idea to do scratch tests on all jade pieces especially those that truly authentic archaic jade pieces because some time it is possible to scratch the surface of even authentic jade pieces because:
(1) They might not be made of either jadeite and nephrite, especially large pieces;
(2) The hardness of some archaic pieces could be reduced if buried in places with high humidity or in soil with high acidity or alkalinity. Also hardness of their weathering areas of nephrite pieces can be greatly reduced;
(3) If one would use a Swiss Army knife to do the scratch test and these knives do have a hardness of 6.0, therefor can scratch even nephrite (best use a MOH hardness pick sets)
(4) Scratches would severely damage some authentic archaic jade pieces.
Yes, a while ago I did correspond with Mr. Sam Bernstein and once obtained permission from him in posting in this forum some of the pieces that were for sales in his web site:
http://www.asianart.com/phpforum/index.php?method=detailAll&Id=37324
I just regret that I did not have the resource to purchase the large beautiful Recumbent Buffalo that was made of Black Khotan (Hetain)nephrite jade. For those of us jade lovers who had studied different Hetain jade, we would know how rare and how difficult and expensive in finding truly "BLACK" nephrite jade. If you do not believe me, try to find some, either jade carvings or slabs or rocks.
I really was not in a position to afford his jade offerings at that time and I envy you had the chances in talking with him. May be you can share some of the pointers in jade collecting you had learned from talking with him?
Sadly, once there were a lot of jade lovers (some are jade experts) in this forum but now most of them had left.
I did obtain a large piece of black nephrite jade rock from Australia. Its appearance is not black but it is a genuine Black nephrite jade rock. I would try to post it here.
Again, thanks for sharing your jade collecting experience with us.
Super
P.S. Yes, there are too much personal freedom allowed in the States, as a result some people would not comply with any ordinances for Covid, now we have 200k of new Covid cases daily and 100k new Covid ICU patients. One Covid patient died in every second. It is totally out of control and yet there is not a single US politician (leader?) who can do anything about it. It is indeed a sad situation.
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