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Subject:Siberian Jade
Posted By: Bill Mon, Sep 22, 2008
There is a piece of beautiful Russian nephrite jade rough listed on eBay that attracted my attention:
290262172007
23.80 LBS - GEM GREEN RUSSIAN NATURAL JADE ROUGH
With about 21 hours to go, it received 18 bids with the current bid at $ 102.50 with $ 26.17 postage shipped in U.S.
Even at this price, it would be a very good deal for such a piece of high quality and large Russian nephrite rough because they are simply no longer easy or cheap to find. I believe the final price would be higher.
I am almost certain this is indeed Russian nephrite jade because of its unique texture.
One author mentioned that in the 20s and 30s in Beijing jade shops in China Russian jades were used in large scale to make copies of archaic jades that were sold to tourists as archaic jades. One may find some of these being exhibited in oversea museums as archaic jades today. Since the same jade carvers carved Qing dynasty jade carvings (for the emperors) carved these jade copies, therefore they were extremely difficult to tell apart from genuine Qing dynasty jade carvings. I have seen a very beautiful jade carving carved with this type of Russian jade not too long ago and I believe it was sold for around $500. It was sold as either Qing or early dynasty but I believe it was probably made around the 30s because of the unique Russian jade it was made of.
Let us see what S. Howard Hansford says about Russian jade in his book, "Chinese Jade Carving", chapter III, Sources of Supply of the Jade Stone, p. 42-43:
"Nephrite also comes to Peking workshops from deposits near the western end of Lake Baikal in Siberia. During the nineteen century several travllers, chiefly Russians, reported the presence of jade boulders there, in river valleys of the Botogol Mountains in the Government of Irkutsk. According to M. Bauer, jade was discovered in situ in 1850 in the valley of the Onot by the French engineer, J.P. Alibert, and much of the Siberian nephrite appears to come from this neighbourhood. Alibert also found rich deposits of graphite there, and these were subsequently worked by the firm of Faber, the Bavarian lead-penicl manufacturers.
Generally speaking, it is not possible to determine the source of a piece of nephrite from its appearance, but the Siberian material, usually light to medium green in colour, is distinguished by the presence of little black flecks of graphite embedded in the stone. This feature, by no means a disagreeable one, is regarded as characteristic of Siberian jade by the Chinese, who call the stone po-tsai yu, "spinach jade". It would not, however, be correct to assume that all Siberian jade is of the "spinach" variety, since the stone has been found dispersed over a wide area in the Lake Baikal region, and, presumably, not everywhere associated with graphite."
Therefore if you look at this piece (see pictures attached) you will easily see those black graphite flecks embedded in the spinach green jade rough.
Therefore I truly believe sometimes by studying the DNA or fingerprints of jade materials, comparing the jade materials of known archaic one with that of those which are in question, one may at least rule out the "modern" jade copies.
Bill
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