Asianart.com | Associations | Articles | Exhibitions | Galleries

This has a long black silk string with hole through side under arm.It looks like Chinese but not sure.It has carved leaf and floral on back.This item measures 3 inches tall and looks to be brown jade with some white in it also. Not sure of age.

Looks like it could be used as a netsuke.

When I looked at the first carving I thought agate or smoky quartz for sure, then I looked at the second image and the veining in the bottom half of the stone makes me think heavily dyed jade... Must admit I am a bit stumped as the colour and translucency of the top half makes me want to rule jade out.. Also regarding the age the "Lotus child" motif is a very common Song-Ming motif- which refers to 1000 boys (born in a lotus) from a mother (Fan-zhi) who was herself the offspring of a deer and immortal.. Lotus are often symbols of fertility and boy-child births for this reason.... Date wise I would say Ming dynasty or 19th century...Know this sound a bit vague but without really holding the piece dont think I can be more precise... (Many Ming themes were reproduced in the 19th century)... Its a nice interesting little piece either way

I have to disappoint you, as this item is not made out of Jade.It also looks like it has an artificial color.
Ernest

Hmm.. So maybe this could be Mutton fat nephrite jade that is dyed ?
I scratched into the bottom with a knife and it did not change color. Any other way to tell what type of stone this is ?

A strong needle is a better tool...and one puts enough pressure on until a white or black scratch is visible. A mutton-fat Nephrite is never artificially colored in these modern times. Specific gravity is another test.
Ernest

I hope you are just kidding, why would anybody dye any mutton fat Hetian jade BROWN? This appears to be low quality stone, modern carving. No pun intended.

Tested the specific gravity of the item and it is between 2.9 and 3.2 . Item weighs 64 grams. In water it weighs 20 to 22 grams with cup and water zero'd out.
I scratched the bottom of the piece and it has same dark color.It was suggested it might be stained on here,not saying it was.

From what I have seen and the Specific Gravity I tested between 2.9 and 3.2 depending on how accurate my digital scale is. Item does weigh 64 grams and if my post went through my scale gives a weight of 20 to 22 grams in water. From scratch test on base it is probably not stained where it does not change color and is soft like nephrite. Brown Nephrite would be my guess from other pieces I have seen and the scratch test and specific gravity.Nephrite is 2.96 SG but can be higher. I do not need to use a needle test .This item is cold and heavy,not plastic.

I really hate to disappoint you because I know how badly you, like most of us who first started jade collecting, would like to find a nice piece of authentic ancient jade carving. The problem is, it is easily said than done and very often we would obtain pieces for what we paid for or much lower than what we paid for.

I am no jade expert and I always admire those who can tell the age of a piece just by looking at its low resolution picture. However, I did spend some time in studying jade material and do believe more often than not no decent jade carvers/artists would spend their precious time in the "carving" of a jade piece with inferior material. I kept looking at the pictures of your piece and I believe it might indeed be stained brown because the stain did not permeate evenly on it, much lighter at its bottom half. It does kind of looking like agate but it was simply not translucent enough. My first impression was that it could not be nephrite jade whether or not it will pass the scratch test (passing the scratch test does not guarantee the material is nephrite). Based on the quality of its material and its crude carving, I am just not convinced it can be dated "Ming dynasty or 19th century".

Your specific gravity testing results confirmed my belief.

Weight of your jade piece in air (mass) = 64 gram
Weight of your jade piece in water = 20 - 22 gram
Volume of your piece = 64- 20 = 44
or 64- 22= 42
specific gravity = mass/volume = 64/44 = 1.45
or64/42 = 1.52

I know of no decent material has such a low specific gravity (1.45-1.52). As a matter of fact, even serpentine or agate should have S.G. of between 2.40-2.60. In short, it is possible that your S.G. testing results might not be correct. I had tested over 1,000 pieces of jade cravings, slabs and rocks for S.G. and hardness, to obtain accurate S.G. results one must use quality instruments such as a Pesola spring balance, probably 100 gram size for your piece.

In this case, since the weight of your piece is so low and based on the appearance of its material, IMHO, the chance of it being made of nephrite is close to zero and it was at best made in the 20th century. Of course, I could be wrong without being able to examine your piece in person. May be you should forward it to reputable auction houses for their expert opinions. Cheer. Super

Most sites and videos that I have seen doing a quick test on (pure) items = one type of metal or gem,just divide the air weight by water weight when you have the actual water in a cup on the scale and not under it and item suspended in water. I have seen one gold site that was testing a quartz piece with gold in it using the same equation as you did to find out the amount of gold within the quartz.

I need a more fine scale also,the one I am using keeps fluctuating and not a gem and gold scale.

The video link I gave is how I weighed my item but as I said the digital scale i am using is not fine enough or accurate enough.I might have a local jeweler look at the item or have gemologist at a local university here look at it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xYdSEAm-7uI

Despite what others are saying I maintain that the workmanship on this is not too bad...
Compare it to other commercially produced modern nephrites shown on this site and you can see a reasonable amount of work has gone into it... Were it not for the dubious material I am certain no Asian art auction would balk at a 19th century dating, it is very consistant with carvings from that era, I would like to see it magnified though...

Asianart.com | Associations | Articles | Exhibitions | Galleries |