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Re: I have a Antique Jade Fish Carving to identify

Posted By: Bill
Posted Date: Dec 19, 2007 (05:51 PM)

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Steve:

What you said are mostly correct except your first sentence, "Chinese Jade is a nephrite jade". The Chinese definition of jade is "any stones that are beautiful" or more correctly jades are any beautiful stones that possess the five virtues (see my other message posted at the Pipane message). In short, any beautiful stones that are lustrous, pure, beautiful, hard can be called jades such as nephrite, serpentine, turquoise, lapis, agate, etc. According to the Chinese, the only beautiful stone that has all these five virtues is the Hetian jade (nephrite).

I am afraid your piece is not nephrite, may not even be bowenite but just serpentine. I believe you can scratch it with a good pocket knife. The inside of your piece looks light green and not the pale yellow outside. I have only seen two pale yellow nephrite pieces so far after testing over 1,000 jade pieces. Yellow nephrite is much rarer than even white nephrite. Most light yellow jade pieces are serpentine.

I believe you should trust what Ernest, Anita and Mr. Zhu said about your piece although I know it hurts. If you paid too much for it, I suggest you should get a refund from the dealer especially if he sold it to you as an "antique jade" piece.

This is just my personal opinion. Please do not get offended. I have been burnt a few times myself by dishonest dealers and I can understand how you would feel.

Bill
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