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Dear forum members and fellow jade collectors:

When I first started collecting jades, according to most Chinese jade books the fastest and easiest way a beginner could learn about jade would be the jade material. Due to the difficulty in obtaining quality jade material such as Hetian nephrite jade at ancient time and even today (the only known nephrite mine closer to China is XinJiang which is far away from the Chinese capitals), very often quality jade materials would only be reserved for the most skilled jade carvers to make master pieces. Even during the late 80s, nephrite jades were reserved for master jade carvers to carve high-priced fake archaic jades (as Han jade carvings) and lower quality carvings were almost always made of lesser materials such as serpentine. Therefore by judging the quality of jade material of a jade carving one would almost immediately be able to tell how good or how bad a jade carving may be. Of course not all archaic jades were made of quality nephrite jades and not all nice Hetian jade carvings were carved with super skills. There are always exceptions.

However, I soon learn that just knowing jade material alone would not carry me too far in the learning of jades. I would never be able to tell how old or how good a jade carving is. The problem is most Chinese jade books said it would take at least 8-10 years for one to really learn about the carving of jades.

I tried to seek some helps in this forum and other jade forum. I kept hearing jade "experts" mentioning how a jade piece was modern because of the modern tool marks found on it. However, when I tried to ask them what exactly modern tool marks were and what they should look like. It seemed everybody had a different idea regarding what they were and nobody could really explain them with explanations or pictures. A few were annoyed with me because they believed the answer to my questions should be apparent and I should not ask such stupid questions. Little did I know not too many of them could actually answer my questions? Worse, even those of us who loved to use the term "modern fake", "modern copy" for those "made yesterday" jade carvings, none of us could really define what exactly "modern" meant. I did once ask Anita to send me pictures of both modern and ancient tool marks found on jade carvings and I believe she was in the process of doing so.

I had turned to jade books that discuss carving techniques found on Neolithic jade carvings. Unfortunately they were very difficult to understand and their pictures were that of low resolution, or super microscopic (electronic microscope) or line drawings. Without seeing the real pieces they are trying to describe on their books, it would be almost impossible for one to truly understand what they are trying to describe.

However, after numerous attempts and by trial and error I believe I have begun to understand at least the major difference between "modern tool marks" and "older tool marks". Note that I do not call the "older" tool marks "ancient" because I do not know if they are indeed ancient or not. (* There are seven changes in tu (circular carving tool) from Neolithic time to Qing dynasty. It is extremely difficult to distinguish the carving marks left by these tu from different dynasties.) I believe "modern jade carvings" or "modern fake" (if you want to be insulting) should be reserved for all those jade or non-jade carvings that were carved with modern high-speed electrical carving tools and polished with high-hardness grit (or paste such as diamond or corundum) with high-speed polishing tools . Such modern carving tools were known to replace the older manual carving tools as early as the early 60s but as late as the late 80s. Therefore, a jade carving found with "manual tool marks" may be made before early 60s or could be as late as late 80s. Therefore, I believe a modern jade carving may have more to do with the tools used in carving them than their exact ages. If an experienced jade faker will employ all of the ancient carving tools and skills in making a fake archaic jade carving with the highest quality Hetian jade today, then except those few jade experts, most of us would not be able to tell the difference.

Recently, a few forum members were quite interested in obtaining the article, "The identification of carving techniques on Chinese jade" written by Margaret Sax, et al. I sent the article to a few of them. In the article I believe the authors were trying to study the different carving techniques (such as drilling, wheel-cutting, circular sawing, sawing, flexible string sawing) found on eight authentic Chinese jades dated from Neolithic to the Qing dynasty. I believe in doing so they hope they would be able to use what they learned in assisting them in authenticating (attributing) other unknown Chinese jade carvings in the future by examining the carving techniques found on them.

This shows us in order to correctly and accurately attribute a Chinese jade piece is easily said than done. If it eludes so many jade scholars and/or jade experts, how in the world would any of us who frequently participate in this forum have the real know-how in attributing or dating our jade pieces? How are we going to convince others that our pieces are indeed authentic? Do we have to show a piece of Gu Fang's authentication paper for our jade carvings every single time to show that they are indeed authentic? What will we be then? A true jade collector or just a jade buyer/owner who really knows nothing about jade but have to depend on experts?

I once sent the pictures of a few jade carvings posted in this forum to a very respectable jade scholar/dealer and he told me it was hard enough for him to attribute a jade piece by examining it in person, there were simply no ways he could tell anything about them from pictures alone. Therefore it never amaze me that some of us including myself can pretend that we can correctly attribute any jade carvings except the obvious bad ones with low-resolution pictures alone.

He also told me out of all these jade carvings he had for sales, there were only 3 archaic pieces and one was dubious. When I asked him why, he told me because authentic archaic jades were extremely rare and therefore they would be extremely expensive and difficult to find. For a knowledgeable jade expert to admit that, it makes me wonder how in the world can so many of us seem to have no problems in finding genuine archaic or ancient jade carvings.

After examining the tool marks on more than 1,000 pieces of jade carvings, big and small, made of different materials, I now believe it is easier for me to tell if a jade carving is modern or not. To my chagrin, when I looked at some of my previous jades and examined their tool marks closely with a 10x loupe, I would have no choice but concluded, "Modern", "Modern", "Modern" and then once a while "Not sure" or “Possibly old".

I was lucky to have a Hongshan jade bird that both Diasai and I believed to be authentic. What I believe was modern tool marks before were actually not modern at all but combined with three different tool marks overlapped each other. These tool marks matched the carving techniques used in the carving of authentic Hongshan jades described by Hongshan jade books . Of course, I may never know for sure if the piece would indeed be authentic or not unless I send it to Gu Fang for authentication. I learned from the beginning that polishing is almost the most critical part of the jade carving techniques because on ancient or archaic jades, it requires hours or sometimes years of polishing to achieve such a superb or soft luster on a jade carving. Therefore, sometimes just by examining the luster alone, one would immediately be able to tell how good or how bad a jade piece can be. Another interesting thing I have known but was not able to confirm till now is that: on many older or even ancient jade carvings, you would simply not see any types of tool marks. Therefore, previously when I looked at a beautiful jade carving without any types of tool marks, it always confused me because while many forum members seemed to think they were modern, my heart told me there was no way such a beautiful piece could be made today with modern carving tools. Well, I happened to ask the respectable jade scholar/dealer recently regarding how one could tell how good or how old a piece would be by their tool marks. He told me there were actually no tool marks could be found on some of the older and better jade pieces because:

"What I meant was that in the old days the artist/lapidary carefully smoothed out and polished away the tooling marks, so that in an actual old piece there is sometimes _nothing_ to see. That's a _good_ sign! Sloppy modern copies will instead often show the rough tooling marks left by high-speed electrically powered bits, that the carver was too lazy to smooth out. The polishing step, in the old days, was actually one of the longest and most tedious parts of the job, especially getting into every little line and crevice with tiny leather bits. These days we often see a crudely and quickly carved jade object that is then given a quick once-over on a buffing wheel charged with diamond dust. This gives a bright, glassy finish to the high spots but of course completely misses the concave portions that the old time polisher would have spent so much time on. Even _nephrite_ is sometimes given such a bright "diamond polish" that it ends up looking like ... jadeite. That's incongruous, like looking at a blue colored rose.”

I posted his explanation here for all to share because he says it so much better than me. These remarks came form a well respected jade scholar who had published in many journals.

Of course this (lack of tool marks) may not apply to all "older" jade pieces but what he said did make a lot of sense and it solves all my previous puzzles.

I believe the lack of opportunities for most of us to examine closely the tool marks (or lack of tool marks) and other carving techniques shown on a jade carving but have to depend mainly on low-resolution pictures posted here will very often result in our incorrect evaluations and opinions toward jade pieces posted in this forum. That may explain why there seem to be such vast difference in opinions between some of the forum members toward the authenticity of each other's jade collection.

May be it is time for us to readily admit that many of us can indeed make wrong judgments regarding jades, especially without the benefit of examining them closely no matter how great we believe our expertise in jade may be. That way, may be we can start to truly share what we have learned about jades in this forum without being afraid of receiving ridicule from other fellow jade collectors. That is my sincere wish, coming from one who really just starts to learn more about jades.

Bill

Saw this jade turtle and almost did not get it because it was not made of nephrite but was made of xiu yan jade (serpentine). However, I kept looking at its lustrous and smooth surface and could not detect any apparent tool marks anywhere on it.

If this piece's hardness is less than 5, then to achieve such a luster is really not that easy and to have no apparent tool marks detected anywhere on it, then it was really made with good workmanship.

Of course, until I can examine it closely I would not know too much about it.

Recently, it is almost impossible to acquire any decent jade turtles. This turtle is quite big, 5.6 in x 4.4 in x 1.2 in, weigh about 700 gram.

I do not see too many modern pieces look like this.

Bill

During the 70's and 80's i've gathered a huge quantity of jades without knowing the age, i just aquired those Pieces because of the beauty and stethic. It Was a time when almost no one looked for jade. Today i think it is a very big responsability to have pieces of such a quality without knowing anything about it. In Portugal there is no one with the knoledge to help me.

Forgot to mention, the turtle pictures of which I just posted, was purchased at Pan Jian Yan (an antique flea market) in BeiJing.

B

There are a few jade pieces I have high hope when I viewed their pictures because there did not seem to be any tool marks on them. Their styles and forms resemble those of archaic jades.

Yet when I received them and examined them very closely with a 10x and 12x loupe, to my chagrin, I detected both modern tool marks and polishing marks on all of them. The only consolidation is they were actually made of nephrite jade and I did not pay a fortune for them.

I believe I start to understand how difficult it would be to really be able to find a truly genuine archaic jade piece. Most the one out there are just fakes, some better than the others, and some higher priced than others.

It just makes me wonder how can some of these other jade collectors can be so lucky in acquiring so many archaic pieces including "genuine" Hongshan pieces and how in the world there are so many genuine Hongshan pieces for sales in one of the member's site?

B

Recently I saw this "Carving Siberian Jade Nephrite Catseye Green Turtle" on eBay

180295834094

It does not look like nephrite to me and it looks modern but when I examined its carving I did not see any thing resembled modern tool marks except on its two eyes and mouth. Out of curiosity, I asked the dealer how old this jade turtle was.
His reply was "This piece was carved in Russia recently. It is not an old piece."

Its Buy It Now price is $130 with free shipping. I am not sure it is worth the money but is quite nice. It also shows you that if a carver really tries hard enough he can polish off all the modern tool marks and it would be very hard to tell how old it is except may be judging by its polishing (comparing modern high-speed polishing and older manual polishing).

Bill

monsieur bonjour
I have a collection of ancient jade which I am sure (evaluated by Christie's Qing era, which I value but not the time of the coup I do not know if they are beginning or end period) by cons I have not shown the oldest. Can you help me please find out if they are prior to the Qing era?

very cordialy

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