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Subject:Small jade tray
Posted By: Moon Fri, Nov 13, 2020 IP: 2001:980:57ae:1:d49b

Dear participants,

Recently I bought a jade tray from a collector. He collected a lot of Chinese art. I wondered if anyone knows from what time this tray is.

Hope someone can help me further.

regards







Subject:Re: Small jade tray
Posted By: Mark Adams Sat, Nov 14, 2020

Hi Moon,
Unfortunately in my opinion this tray you purchased is not jade. It's soapstone and from the second half of the 20th century.
Mark@imperial

Subject:Re: Small jade tray
Posted By: Moon Tue, Nov 17, 2020

Thanks it is soapstone indeed!
You can easily scratch it with a needle.
Still two pictures outside.

Greeting Moon





Subject:Re: Small jade tray
Posted By: Ernest Wilhelm Sat, Nov 14, 2020

Try to take a few pictures in a natural light, making sure that the photos are sharp and show the natural color
Ernest

Subject:Modern Chinese nephrite jade ink dish (tray)
Posted By: Super Sat, Nov 28, 2020

I normally would not bother to post any modern jade pieces in this forum but the ink dish posted here piqued my interest. Around 2006, I picked up several Chinese jade ink dishes (trays) as study pieces from China in very reasonable prices. The Chinese dealer appeared to know the difference between nephrite pieces and soft stone pieces and he described and labeled them as such. The texture of my jade ink dish posted here looks very similar to those that were posted by Moon in this thread. Yet there are some subtle differences, IMHO:

(1) In the top and bottom picture of his ink dish, there appear to be quite a few white spots all over its bottom. I do not know what caused them but if they were from normal contacts with other surfaces it sat on, that may not be a good sign because nephrite has a hardness of about 5.5 - 6.5 and should not be easily scratched from normal contact since it is harder than metal. Therefore, it is possible that his piece may be made with softer material such as serpentine or xiu yan jade (xiu yu) but only further testing can confirm this;

(2) It also bothers me that there is a lack of luster on his piece and there are a lot of translucent areas especially around its edges. He can try to rub some Vaseline on it and see if that would bring out any luster. Vaseline would not make a piece more lustrous unless the piece was originally being polished correctly. A nephrite piece should have more luster on its surface than his piece shown here. Of course, the pictures may not reflect its actual look or color.

Any way, all my three pieces of jade ink dishes, after testing their S.G. and MOH hardness, their material were confirmed to be nephrite, probably inferior Mt. Kunlun nephrite jade based on their color, texture and quality. The puzzled part is how old are my three jade ink dishes (would post picture of other two pieces if there are enough interest)?

Based on this thread posted by me as a jade novice in 2008:

http://www.asianart.com/phpforum/index.php?method=detailAll&Id=32001

quoting myself:
"I am simply trying to show once again nephrite is scarce and is not cheap. According to the article "The Jade Stone of Heaven" published in the September, 1987 issue of National Geographic, during the 80s it was both difficult and expensive to find nephrite for making jade fakes. I do not know if this shortage of nephrite jades become better in the 90s and the 2000s."

My Modern Chinese nephrite jade ink dish posted here is about 14 cm x 11 cm x 3 cm and weighs 554 gram (about 1 lb 3.8 oz.) That means it would take 1 kg or more nephrite to carve this piece. Even with lesser quality nephrite jade, to carve something hollow like an ink dish with genuine nephrite, is not CHEAP or profitable, even in the 70s or 80s. Therefore I believe my ink dish could be done between 40s - early 60s when nephrite material was still readily available and labor was cheap. Opinions?

Interestingly, during my jade collecting and seeking journey, I found that to find any regular sized jade bowls or cups that were made with either nephrite or jadeite were extremely difficult unless you were willing to pay sometime exorbitant prices. I once saw a jade bowl (in size of a regular small rice bowl) that was made of beautiful dark green nephrite jade but I hesitated and was outbid. How I wish I could have bought a jade bowl that was made of nephrite! The reason for the difficulty to obtain bowls that were made of genuine nephrite jade is because (1) It wastes a lot of material to make anything hollow, like a jade bowl or cup; (2) It is extremely labor intensive and mistake can be made and ruin the whole bowl.

Case in point, a pair of mutton-fat Hetin nephrite jade bowls made during the Qing Emperor era, just material alone costs 5000 taels at the time(about 37.8 gram vs 31.10 gram per troy ounce) of silver, that was equivalent to about 6,075 troy ounces of silver. With current silver spot of US $22.81 per troy ounce, material cost of these two jade bowls would cost about US $138,570 at the time. Just polishing of this pair of jade bowls alone took about one year. Now that may explain why indeed it can be difficult or expensive to find any jade bowls that were made of good nephrite or jadeite.

If anybody who has any regular sized or large jade bowls (nephrite or jadeite), please post their pictures here so we can enjoy them. Thanks.

Bill (Super)









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Subject:Re: Modern Chinese nephrite jade ink dish (tray)
Posted By: rat Wed, Dec 02, 2020

Don't know anything about jade but am glad to see you are still around

Subject:Re: Modern Chinese nephrite jade ink dish (tray)
Posted By: Super Thu, Dec 03, 2020

Hi, rat:

Am glad to hear from you too. There are not too many of us old timers left in this forum. Now I am a senior but still Work From Home. People are crazy here in the States, many went everywhere without masks. In Thanksgiving (last Thursday), both my neighbors had many guests visiting them, none wore masks. Now we have one person died every second in USA. Sad because all these could be prevented, like in China. Stay Healthy!

Super (Bill)

Subject:Re: Modern Chinese nephrite jade ink dish (tray)
Posted By: rat Fri, Dec 04, 2020

Yes, it's crazy. It seems that nothing short mass immunization is going to slow the virus down in the US, so unfortunate. Good luck to you!

Subject:Re: Small jade tray
Posted By: Super Sat, Nov 28, 2020

http://hoffmanjade.com/pages/jade622.htm
http://hoffmanjade.com/pages/jade213.htm

Just to show you it is no longer cheap any more to find any jade brush washers that were made of nephrite, the above links show two pieces of nephrite brush washers in Mr. Eric Hoffman's Far East Gallery. Mr. Hoffman is a renown and knowledgeable jade expert and had written many articles on jade and had helped large auction house in examining a QianLong collection of archer rings:

https://www.asianart.com/articles/hoffman
/index.html#3

https://www.asianart.com/books/reviews/jades.html

In his web site, he has offered some excellent jade books:
http://hoffmanjade.com/pages/book1.htm

Please understand that I am in now way trying to advertise for his site because he really just does this for his love of jade, no longer for monetary reasons. Bill (Super)

P.S. Most of the pieces posted in his site does not reflect what his collection contains, if you are interested in obtaining any nice Hetain jade carvings, you may have to contact him directly.

Subject:Re: Small jade tray
Posted By: Mark Adams Sat, Dec 05, 2020

Hi Super,
I don't know Eric Hoffman personally only by way of his web site. Most of his jades on offer through his site should be considered low quality akin to tourist type wares.
I am sure he has other better quality etc.
Another respected dealer/appraiser is Sam Bernstein from San Francisco. His knowledge is phenomenal. He's also a great guy to converse with.
Did you by chance run your brush washer by Eric?
To my eye this looks modern and not nephrite jade. Perhaps serpentine. Have you performed a SG test?
I do have a large lidded censer from the late 19th century. Light celedon jade with two Foo dogs on the lid. Unfortunately I am unable to post it here for some reason even though I have reduced the size etc. I am using a mobile phone.
Yes sadly the USA is really in a dire state atm.
Mark@imperial

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.




Subject:Australian Black Jade Rock
Posted By: Super Mon, Dec 07, 2020

Posted are the pictures of my piece of Australian black nephrite jade that I had obtained a while ago, paid a pretty high price for it especially for shipping, came all the way from Down Under to USA.

It weighs almost 6 lb, I had troubles holding it since it is quite large. I took a picture of it after wet it with water and you can see its black color shown much better (middle pic). I believe most of this black jade was used to make black jade jewelries such in this site:

https://www.mountainjade.co.nz/pages/types-of-jade-australian-black

and they are not cheap.

A while ago black nephrite jades could be found in USA but now they had all become scare or extinct.
IMHO genuine YELLOW or Black Hetain nephrite jades are the most scarce, then genuine bright celadon, then white. Today quality Hetain nephrite jade and quality jadeite had become very scarce.







Subject:Another MODERN neprhite jade brush washer of mine
Posted By: Super Mon, Dec 07, 2020

Posted are the pictures of one of the three MODERN nephrite jade brush washers I bought a while ago. This may be the BEST looking one although it is indeed "Modern" (less than 100 years old) and albeit made of lower grade nephrite possibly those from Kunlun Mountain. Yes, it was definitely made of nephrite, after testing for its S.G. and MOH hardness (with a hardness pick sets) After testing a few thousands jade pieces, rocks and slabs (because of a jade novice's enthusiasm for jade at the time) and studying jade material, I cannot say I am a jade expert but did gain a lot of knowledge on jade material. Interesting, when I look at a jade piece, the first thing I look at is not its carving marks, weathering, carving quality, carving styles etc. but the quality of its material. Bad material immediately raises a big red flag to me no matter how much story or history the piece may possess. Good authentic jade pieces should never be made with BAD material because jade carvers/artists would not waste their precious time in "carving" a master piece with inferior material.

I obtained these three MODERN nephrite jade brush washers as study pieces, paid a price that is not more than the price of its nephrite jade. I was the one who "STOLE" these three pieces like one time I bought a collection of jade elephants that brought to USA in the 60s. I could not tell for sure what they were made of but was almost 90% certain they were made of jadeite and some of these elephants weighed more than 300 gram. After I bought them, they were tested to be jadeite, and I STOLE them because in today's market, it has become very costly to buy any decent carvings that were made of jadeite. I sold one piece to my co-worker in very LOW price and I had to tell her now it is worth a a bit more. It is amazing how fast rare material like jade can go up.

During the 2008 Chinese Olympic held in Beijing, very nice Hetain nephrite jade (from Xianjiang) was used to make Olympic medals) and after the Olympic you can see all kinds of jade carvings, jade balls, jade eggs made of this left over nice Hetain nephrite jade all over the market. I bought a nice size dark green Hetain nephrite jade ball at very decent price. If you try to buy a nice nephrite jade ball especially those that were made of nice Siberian nephrite jade, you would know how much it would cost. Even jade carvings made of nice Canadian nephrite jade now cost a fortune.

In short, even in the 70s, nephrite jade were only used to make high-priced imitation archaic jade carvings in China. So when were they able to "carve" these pretty large sized brush washers with genuine nephrite jade albeit low quality material like those I posted here and for what purposes? That was the six million dollar question.








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