CHINESE JADE.

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXV, Issue 4766, 20 October 1924, Page 1

CHINESE JADE.

SYMBOL IN THE EAST. LONG LIFE AND ETERNITY. When my lady buys in. Bond Street the necklace or earrings of emerald green jade that will add yet one last touch to her autumn tinted beauty, does she think at all of anything beyond its green glory 1 asks David Neville in the “Daily Mail.” Away at the innermost end of the Great Wall of China, the wonder of the world that strides westward, 20ft high and 20ft wide, from Shan Hai Kuan, on the Pacific Coast, to Tuskestan, 1500 miles away. Here lies Kaiyukwan, and beside it is a gate through the wall, one of the most ancient trade routes in the world that leads into the heart of the Roof of the World—the Yu Men, the Jade Gate. Through that gate for 3000 years have passed the caravans carrying crude jade from the Quarries of Barkul and Khotan, to be wrought by the lapidaries of China and Japan. For jade is no material for the mere amateur to handle. Very nearly as hard as diamond, it must be ground patiently with a drill and paste of a powdei yet harder than itself; first garnet, then emery, and last of all ruby dust. It is a stubborn and rebellious material, and the glorious colours occur not in masses but in streaks through a duller matrix. The art of the carver of figures and flowers is so to adapt his design as to follow their wayward course. Long years ago the Chinese recognised nine colours —from a clear white, almost like rock crystal, to the brilliant green that nowadays comes only from Burma. Some of these — the kingfisher blue, for example—are so rare that you may see them only in a great museum. On their value no man could set a price. But all to the Chinese were symbols of eternity and long life, and from them were fashioned Ju’i (as you would wish it) sceptres, given to friends in token of goodwill and well enough known, now under their foolish modem name of mandarin sceptres. And the greygreen intermediate shades were the inspiration of the most perfect of Chinese porcelain glazes, the celadon green, to imitate which the plotters of Worcester and Copenhagen admit they have toiled in vain. From the sublime to the ridiculous is never far away. There were jade Quarries in Mexico, and the Aztecs reckoned the powdered stone a sovereign remedy for colic. And so, when stout Cortes’ men first brought the stone to Spain they called it after the Spanas name of the disease, ijada—jade.