Types of Jade used by Mountain Jade
What to look for in Jade
Commercially viable jade fields are limited to a mere handful of countries. On average only a very small portion (3-5%) of all jade extracted is likely to be the sought-after AAA grade or what is known as jewellery or gem grade. Preferred by carvers, jewellery-makers, sculptors and artists, AAA grade is clear, translucent stone without fractures.
As the founder of Mountain Jade (formerly the Jade Factory), John Sheehan's fascination with the captivating jade and jadeite has taken him to almost every known jade field on the globe. As well as travelling to New Zealand sources, he (and his business partner, Dracky Zhang) regularly visit Russia, Canada, China and Australia to personally seek out the highest quality raw material to bring back to their carving workshops in Rotorua and Hokitika.
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Although all commercial fields produce generic (mostly mid green) jade, each field also has an individual signature jade; for instance New Zealand flower jade, Russian cat’s eye jade and Canadian chrome fleck. It’s this unique signature, along with the key elements of colour, translucency and fine grain, that Mountain Jade look for in jewellery grade stone.
Together John and Dracky have grown their Jade business to a level were it is the biggest in New Zealand. Employing more than 100 people, Mountain Jade offers the largest range of jade carving and jewellery across seven retail outlets in New Zealand and supports many jade carvers.
British Columbian Jade
Jade mining doesn’t have a high profile in Canada possibly because the mineral-rich country extracts around 60 different resources from the earth including iron, gold, copper, silver, oil, uranium and diamonds. Yet despite this apparent lack of recognition, Canada’s enormous nephrite jade deposits contribute more than 70% of the world’s annual production. Around 3 to 5% of the nephrite jade extracted is pure enough to be classed among the sought-after jewellery (or gem) grade.
Mountain Jade has been working with British Columbian jade for more than 16 years. Mountain Jade representatives regularly visit BC mines to source raw green nephrite. John Sheehan’s first buying trip to Vancouver in the mid 1990s for the annual jade sales, which start in early October, didn’t result in a lot of quality jade. What did prove valuable was an invitation to visit the mines ‘up north’ if he wanted to learn about jade.
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So every year for the past 15 years, John has gone ‘up north’ to British Columbia. The mine owners he deals with have three sites, on British Columbian nephrite jade or Click here to look at Mountain Jade’s British Columbian jade collection Kutcho Creek, Cassiar and Boulder Camp, all remote areas a couple of days of hard travel away from Whitehorse, NT.
In (what was then) an open-cast asbestos mine at Cassiar, ‘exasperatingly’ hard rock was blasted out and 40-ton trucks took it off to slag heaps for years before a geologist recognised the ‘worthless’ hard rock was nephrite jade. Something like $US3 million worth of jade was recovered in the first year of slag heap mining. The dump has continued to be ‘mined’ for jade for the past 20 years, although the perpetually frozen earth means only a metre can be exposed each summer.
Able to occur only through the Canadian summer (July-Sept) due to extreme weather conditions, nephrite jade mining in British Columbia is said to start “when the snow gets down to the knees and ends when the snow gets back up to the knees”.
Each BC site produces material of different colour, hardness and inclusions. The in-situ vein at Boulder Camp has a beautiful white dendrite inclusion that goes by the name of snowflake jade in New Zealand. John visits each site at the end of the season and, because he pays a fair price, two of his sons have worked at the mine (Joe for a season and John Junior for two seasons) and he has “paid his dues” over the years, he gets first pick of the new season’s stone. The annual trips yield anything from five to 20 tonne of raw material for the Mountain Jade carving teams in New Zealand and China, depending on the quality of the stone extracted in the preceding year.
Although jade tools dating back 4000 years have been found at Salish sites and some adzes were discovered at the Fraser River in British Columbia, it wasn’t until Chinese labourers arrived in Canada in large numbers in the early 1800s that the nephrite found a market as an ornamental item.
The Chinese railway workers picked up chunks of the green stone along the Fraser River and marvelled at its quality. It also found its way back to China in the coffins of those being returned to the homeland. Once the railway was complete and the Chinese workers left, interest in the nephrite jade abated.
By the time major nephrite jade deposits were found in northern British Columbia in the early 1970s, China had closed its doors to Western exports. It wasn’t until China re-opened its markets to international trade in the 1990s, the potential for major exporting opportunities soared, and China became Canada’s largest buyer of British Columbian nephrite jade.
Australian Black Jade
The small South Australian town of Cowell, on the Eyre Peninsula, is the site of the largest known deposit of black nephrite jade in the world today.
Almost all (98%) Cowell jade is black, and the majority of that either B or C grade material unsuitable for the manufacturing process. In a world that favours AAA jewellery grade green jade, there is not a big market for the material from Cowell.
Mountain Jade sources around a tonne of Australia black nephrite from Cowell every two or three years. While the company produces a small range of black jade jewellery, the main attraction of Cowell jade is its ability to provide a colour contrast when used alongside other colours of jade in jewellery. The Chinese, especially, consider that the best jade pieces include three colours.
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Unlike jade in many other places of the world, Australian nephrite jade is a fairly recent discovery. Click here to look at Mountain Jade’s Australian black jade collection A local farmer fossicking on his property in the Minbrie Ranges area near Cowell on the Eyre Peninsula, South Australia, in 1965 came across an outcrop of rock that intrigued him.
Trying to chip a sample for later identification, he quickly discovered the dense hard rock fought back; the harder he hit the rock the more the hammer bounced back. Harry Schiller eventually managed to loosen a 3kg chunk of the stone and sent it to authoritative sources for professional appraisal. Both he and the assessors were astounded to learn that the rock was nephrite jade.
When the South Australian State Government became involved in mapping the area in 1974 to gauge the potential for commercial nephrite production, more than 100 separate nephrite jade outcrops were discovered within a nine square kilometre area that became known as the Cowell Jade Province. Unfortunately Harry Schiller never benefited from his discovery, nor was the expected potential of the field ever realised as a series of companies either went bust or struggled to survive financially.
New Zealand Jade
New Zealand is the source of some of the finest nephrite jade in the world, with many New Zealanders still referring to New Zealand nephrite jade as greenstone. The most likely source of the name ‘greenstone’ is from an observation by 18th Century English explorer Captain James Cook of a “green, talc-like stone of the nephrite species” used by the indigenous Maori people for tools, weapons and ornaments. In recent years the Maori name for New Zealand nephrite, pounamu, has come into widespread use and has largely superseded the word greenstone.
All New Zealand’s nephrite jade fields are found in the South Island on the western side of an alpine faultline; namely Nelson, Westland, South Westland, Wakatipu, Wanaka, Livingstone and Milford. With each region tending to produce different varieties, it was often named by Maori for its likeness to objects in the natural world.
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After the New Zealand government vested ownership of pounamu to the South Island Maori tribe of Ngai Tahu in the late 1990s with the passing of the Ngai Tahu (Pounamu Vesting) Act 1997, the source of New Zealand nephrite jade dried up and, in 2010, has yet to start flowing again. Fortunately Mountain Jade has long sourced nephrite and jadeite from other countries. Click here to look at Mountain Jade’s New Zealand pounamu collection as well as using local nephrite jade, therefore the business is still able to offer jade carvings fashioned from both overseas and indigenous stone due to stockpiled local and imported raw material.
Although there were some lapidary businesses producing nephrite jade jewellery like brooches, pendants and fob pieces, as well as cutlery handles, serviette rings and hei tiki in the late 19th and early 20th Century, the majority of raw New Zealand nephrite jade was exported to Germany and Austria. This export trade ceased in 1947 when an Act of Parliament was passed, that is still in place today, prohibiting the export of unprocessed nephrite jade and bowenite.
Once that law was enacted, New Zealand’s nephrite jade trade languished until gold miners started finding and selling greenstone boulders discovered as a by-product of their mining activities in West Coast Rivers, most notably between Greymouth and Hokitika, and south of Haast. Much of it was sold to a company called Westland Greenstone, founded in Hokitika in 1963. The company mainly on-sold polished greenstone cabochons to tourists; that was until they hired an artist called Theo Schoon in 1970.
Born on the island of Java, in the Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia) in 1915, Theo came to New Zealand with his family in 1939 at the outbreak in WWII. His interest in the arts ranged from drawing, printmaking and painting to wood carving, potting, jewellery-making and photography.
It was his fascination with Maori art that led him to stone carving - and his greenstone carving transformed the way that New Zealand artists saw greenstone. When Theo wrote a book entitled ‘Jade Country’ (published in 1973), it inspired other artists to begin experimenting with greenstone carving and a whole new world opened up. MJ’S development – John’s personal journey
Siberian Jade
The Sayan Mountains near Lake Baikal, in central Siberia, is the primary source of Russian nephrite jade with secondary mining occurring along the Onot River, south of nearby Irkutsk. Although Russia produces some of the finest quality nephrite jade, Siberia’s severe weather conditions and inconsistent production means the raw stone is accessible for two to three months of the year at most.
Although Siberian nephrite jade can be leek green with minute flecks of black iron, Russian nephrite jade also comes in shades of white, off-white or brown shades or chatoyant (cat’s eye jade). Mountain Jade’s founder John Sheehan considers the best quality Russian nephrite jade is pure white with a root beer coloured rind, or a very pale blue green almost teal colour.
Mountain Jade has sourced nephrite jade from Russia since John Sheehan first made contact with a Russian geologist in New Zealand many years ago.
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Click here to look at Mountain Jade’s Russian jade collection His stories about Russian Jade were enough to wet the appetite of any jade carver. The encounter led to an opportunity for John to visit Russia - and a Siberian nephrite mine several days drive from Irkutsk, itself more than 5000km from Moscow.
The days of bouncing around in an army truck, driving up mountain streams at 4mph, and very basic living conditions were forgotten once the nephrite jade source was seen and a business relationship established. John’s son, Joe, and his business partner Dracky have also made visits to Russia to buy from the Lake Baikal village that owns the rights to the white jade vein.
The Russian love affair with nephrite jade began thousands of years ago. There is evidence that the prehistoric inhabitants around the Lake Baikal region used nephrite jade for axes and ornaments as well as trade goods. There are also indications that Siberian river jade was exported to China in the Neolithic period, although written evidence of this trade exists only from the 19th Century. The Chinese called Siberian nephrite jade bocai yu (spinach jade).
The first nephrite jade mine in Siberia’s Sayan Mountains, at the western end of Lake Baikal, was founded in the 18th Century; by the 19th Century it was a popular choice for Russian jewellers and lapidaries. Famous court jeweller Peter Carl Fabergé used Siberian nephrite jade for the bases of his decorated eggs so beloved by Tsar Alexander III and his wife, the Grand Duchess Maria Feodorovna of Russia. Perhaps it was appropriate that Tsar’s sarcophagus was fashioned from Siberian nephrite jade following his death in 1894.
Russian astrologers believe nephrite jade is connected with rebuilding of life. A carved piece of nephrite as a present is still considered to be a sign of special love, friendship, eternal gratitude and favour.
Chinese Jade and Jadeite
In the history of the Chinese dynasties, nephrite jade has always had a special significance. An imperial gemstone, it was considered more valuable than gold and used for crafting the finest objets d’art and religious items as well as things like burial suits and grave furnishings for the Imperial family from as early as 6000 BC.
The majority of jade carved in China before the mid 18th Century was nephrite jade from internal sources; the Kunlun Mountains on the Tibetan Plateau and the Khotan region in the Western Chinese province of Xinjiang.
When the Chinese learnt of Burmese jade during a campaign their army fought in Burma (now Myanmar) in the mid 18th Century, this new source of highly-prized jade began to be imported into China from the rugged mountainous region of Mogaung. Identified as different from nephrite jade and subsequently named jadeite by French mineralogist Alexis Damour in 1863, jadeite quickly became favoured over the nephrite jade.
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Click here to look at Mountain Jade’s Chinese jade and jadeite collection Found in a wide variety of colours including bright emerald-green, pink, lavender, orange and brown, the vivid green variety known as kingfisher (feathers) jadeite became the preferred choice of Chinese imperial scholars and rulers. No jadeite has been discovered or mined in China, despite the fact that jadeite is often referred to as Chinese jade.
Mountain Jade sources a small amount of Chinese nephrite jade from the Gobi Desert. Mountain Jade director Dracky Zhang has twice visited the high plains desert to try and find a reliable source of raw material but hasn’t been successful to date so the company tends to buy the higher-priced jadeite from Myanmar.
Dracky’s brother Jackson Zhang, a master carver working at the company’s factory in Sihui, China, goes to the border jade markets. Even with Jackson’s incredible eye for good stone, is it still “the biggest gamble in the world” according to John Sheehan. Boulders aren’t sawn to reveal the quality of the raw stone; the sellers prefer (at best) to carve and polish a tiny window in each piece and leave it to potential buyers to speculate whether the stone will produce the same fine quality material right through or if what is unseen stone will prove to be partially or completely useless - a classic case of ‘buyer beware’.
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