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Hello All -
I would like to elicit thoughts from forum members on the supposed ancient script and this nephrite bowl.
(1) Does anyone recognize the script, or are these made up characters?
(2) This nephrite (I think) bowl is very thin and delicate... Is this old, or a good fake?
I could take additional pictures if there's interest.
Thanks in advance for any and all opinions
Sincerely,
Scott Alexander

The script is the same character, 福 fu "good fortune/happiness", written repeatedly in a variety of ways. Though some of the character variants are likely quite archaic, this does not seem to be an antique cup to me; also I strongly suspect that the material is not nephrite but a less valuable stone. Not sure that it's a fake though, maybe just a decorative cup.

Thank you for the reply, "rat". The sides of the bowl are thin (perhaps 1/4 inch), and carved out of a polished, whitish stone... Nephrite or not, the ability to carve and polish such a bowl (with such thin walls)out of solid peice of stone is very impressive. I've included other pics to try to show how thin the walls are of this bowl.

It does not appear to be made of nephrite jade to me, especially not Hetian nephrite jade. Probably made of some softer white stone or at best low quality Mount Kulun nephrite jade (doubt it though). Believe or not, to find bowls that were made of nephrite jade, even with common green nephrite jade has become almost impossible and/or costly. The reason is there are a lot of waste in making a jade bowl. During the Qing Emperor QiangLong era, a pair of white Hetian nephrite jade bowls, jade material alone was worth 5,000 taels of silver, even when silver price dropping to about $14 a troy ounce recently, just material alone would cost about US$ 83,000. It would take at least one year just to polish it after they were finished. It is for these reasons almost any jade bowls that are readily available for sales today are not made of real jade.

I would not call it fake though because what it was supposed to imitate? It was just a modern piece. Now of course I can be wrong. Thanks for sharing. Super

Not Jade, how about Marble. S.G test would give the answer.
Ernest

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