Is it some type of the jade family?

[Fiveroosters aka clayandbrush]

Dear all,
I have bought three bottles, provenance an old collection. This one is 55 mm high. Smooth shape, well hollowed. There was some snuff inside. It clearly has some age judging from the general wear. It is very smooth. The stopper is not original, it is actually a bit oval, but a nice one to keep. I am wondering what type of stone it is. Is it some sort of jadeite? It has the texture of jade in places. The base is concave.
Thank you in advance for your comments.
Giovanni

[Joey Silver / Si Zhouyi 義周司]

Dear Giovanni,
    It looks like Jade to me though I'm not sure whether jadeite or nephrite. I love the oval indented foot.
Looks like a good early bottle, though you know me; I need to handle to be sure. not like Steven who can tell over the computer.
Joey

[Wattana]

Dear Giovanni,

In my opinion your bottle is nephrite jade. It is definitely not jadeite.

I have one in my collection with similar characteristics and shape. For many years mine was thought to belong to the serpentine group, possibly bowenite combined in a matrix with other varieties of the mineral. However, there is another bottle of almost identical material formerly in the Pamela R. Lessing collection, illustrated in Robert Hall, Chinese Snuff Bottles XI: The Snowy Peaks Collection, no.83, where it is identified as ‘nephrite with celadon, dark brown and ochre inclusions’. This makes sense, since my bottle is clearly harder than serpentine, and nephrite is known to exist in a wide range of colours. 

Yours appears to be old and well used. These very plain rather austere bottles would probably have been used by the Manchurian horsemen, who needed a simple and robust container for their snuff, but who nevertheless valued the tactile qualities of jade. The Mongolian nomads also used similar shaped bottles (and still do), but theirs are generally made of agate.

I would date your bottle as 18th century.

Tom

[George]

These very plain rather austere bottles would probably have been used by the Manchurian horsemen, who needed a simple and robust container for their snuff, but who nevertheless valued the tactile qualities of jade. The Mongolian nomads also used similar shaped bottles (and still do), but theirs are generally made of agate.

Very, very interesting !!

I kept looking at your bottle Giovanni, and am glad Tom came up with an ID, because although it does look to be jade, I was drawing a complete blank on how to describe the mix .

[David]

Dear Giovanni,

I want to move to Italy! You seem to buy nice bottles every couple of weeks  , is this also from a fair?

I like the shape, it looks nice. Please don't take my question to Tom too seriously, I still have a lot to learn about jade and non jade stones.

Kidding aside, the band of brown/rust goes all the way around the bottle. Is that the skin?

Did you have a chance to look inside with your neat antique endoscope? Does the band also show inside?


Dear Tom,

But this bottle have the sickly greenish/yellowish look and the blackish lines/moss. I always thought those combined are indication to weight heavily into serpentine or it's type. Does your's and the reference have both features?

Curios and very interested,
David

[Wattana]

Dear David,

I cannot speak for Giovanni's bottle, but the one I have is too hard to be from the serpentine group. I once took it to the Asian Institute of Gemological Sciences (AIGS) here in Bangkok for testing. They suggested it was probably a jade conglomerate, but could not say for sure without carrying out a destructive test.

So passed a further 20 years before I saw another of the same material, from the Pamela R. Lessing Collection (a well established old collection). There is a slim chance that it is some other stone, but I find the description given there acceptable until such time as somebody has a better alternative that doesn't involve turning my bottle into a small heap of powdered cinders.

Tom

[Fiveroosters aka clayandbrush]

Thank you dear Joey, Tom, all.
Dear Tom I was pretty sure that the bottle is made of a type of jade, nephrite or jadeite I don’t know, but something in that family. Although I am not a specialist, the type of translucency of the jade is quite typical, especially in the celadon areas, and after having directly seen some examples one can recognize it. But I did the post looking for a confirmation so your post is really appreciated.
Dear Joey, the oval indented foot is another reason that led me to choose this bottle among the others. I can’t say if it is 18th century as suggested by Tom but for sure it has a substantial age judging by the general wear and in my opinion by the shape too. It is very well carved, not exceptionally but very well.
Dear David the brownish band is not the skin in my opinion, it can be seen also from inside. The black lines are not the same of moss agate, they look different.
The story behind this bottle and other two that I bought together with it, is that I know a seller from flea markets who call me when he find something interesting before to bring them to the market. A few days ago he did call me saying that he was going to the home of an old collector (the same from whom I have bought another old bottle in the past) so we met halfway when he left the house. He had ten bottles, all them undoubtedly old, but the price asked was not so low, not high really but it is unthinkable to me to buy the whole lot. So I did spot three bottles, and among them I had to discard one because I want to remain within a certain budget. I discarded a nice agate one, really rich color, with flattened oval shape and did stay on this one because it was the only one looking as jade and because the overall shape and foot, plus a fossiliferous one that I post on the next days. At the end, with some more amount, I got also a glass one imitating agate.
Kind regards
Giovanni

[YT]

Dear Giovanni,

That is a very good way of making sure the really nice stuff pass through your hand before it goes to the general market. Seller will also be happy as they get a genuine buyer so fast.
It also boils down to you being a fair buyer so that it can work long term.

Cheers,
YT

[Joey Silver / Si Zhouyi 義周司]

Dear Giovanni,
    I would definitely agree with Tom re. it's being 18th C., probably ca.1710-1758, and it's being nephrite (though at first, crystalline 'bits' in the matrix made me wonder if it wasn't jadeite), because it is a 'cruddy' piece of jade, and from 1710-1758 the Qing lost control of the source area for nephrite jade, and used any piece they could get. Some of the finest bottles were produced at this time, making a virtue of necessity.
Best,
   Joey

[Wattana]

Dear Joey,

Thanks for reminding me of the short period when the source area was out of Qing control. I don't remember the historical events too well.  Is that referring to the Kunlun Mountains, traditional source of the finest nephrite 'pebble' jade?

Tom

[Fiveroosters aka clayandbrush]

Yes dear YT,
that is the best way until the mine will be completely exploited.
Wow dear Joey, your dating for this bottle makes me really excited!
Thank you very much, at least I did well this time!
Kind regards
Giovanni

[Joey Silver / Si Zhouyi 義周司]

Dear Tom,
     Short period?!
     We are talking the last 10 years of the Kangxi reign, the whole Yongzheng reign, and the first 22 years of the Qianlong reign! That's a big chunk out of the Qing dynasty's 'golden cultural period'  (which many consider  was from 1661 to 1799 (from the Kangxi Emperor's ascent to the Qianlong Emperor's death).
     I must confess Tom, I don't know enough about Chinese geography, except that it was the area from Sichuan west and north; what I  was told is called Xinjiang, Khotan, etc., including today's Henan and areas along the Yangzi, and including the Kunlun mountains.
    Could someone with a better knowledge of western Chinese geography correct whatever mistakes I made? Thanks.
Best,
  Joey

Dear Joey,

Thanks for reminding me of the short period when the source area was out of Qing control. I don't remember the historical events too well.  Is that referring to the Kunlun Mountains, traditional source of the finest nephrite 'pebble' jade?

Tom

[Wattana]

     Short period?!

Joey,

In the context of Chinese history 48 years is a VERY short time! 

Tom

[Joey Silver / Si Zhouyi 義周司]

Dear Tom,
    You are looking at it as a part of the Macro (All of Chinese history), while I'm looking at it in its context of the Micro (smack in the middle of the golden period of Qing arts).
   It all depends where you are looking from. Or as Einstein said,"It's all Relative!"   
Best,
 Joey

     Short period?!

Joey,

In the context of Chinese history 48 years is a VERY short time! 

Tom

[David]

Dear Tom, Giovanni, and Joey,

Thank you for the great pieces of knowledge, I forgot about translucency and now knowing that they ran out of good jade for a while makes sense to me as to why they would make a jade that looks like this to a bottle. 

I recall reading somewhere that jade and serpentine are sometimes found together, as serpentine can become jade if sufficient pressure and heat were applied. Is that true? If yes, is this kind of bottle material from the interface of jade/serpentine?

Congrats, Giovanni!  It might even be imperial (for princes of course) ontop of being datable!
High Five -ish!
David

[David]

Dear Tom,

There is a slim chance that it is some other stone, but I find the description given there acceptable until such time as somebody has a better alternative that doesn't involve turning my bottle into a small heap of powdered cinders.

  I am shocked that you would not sacrifice a bottle in the pursuit of knowledge!!!

Kidding, 
David

[rpfstoneman]

Giovanni and all,

Giovanni, I would have suspected your bottle to be nephrite also.  Jade materials is still one of my weakest areas and I really need find myself a mentor in this area.  I love stone snuff bottles but tend to stir away from them because of their difficulty to age.  Stone bottles just tend to have fewer attributes on which to evaluate and thus formulate an opinion.  

Then there is jade.  The skill to identify jade requires a knowledge and awareness of the stone's appearance in all it's forms, sound deductive reasoning, and ultimately instrumentation to verify.  Jade is often easily confirmed when presented in it's purest form, but jade can also be a most difficult stone to identify because of all the variants in color, form, and composition.  These facts and the present expense of such bottles is likely why I only have one jade bottle in my collection.

Anyway, to the point of my post.  In looking up the term Honan jade recently I came across a link to a 1982 jade article "The Jade Enigma" which I download and still need to read.  It appears to be informative on jade and some of the common minerals it can be confused with, so I've attached the link below if you wish to check it out  yourself.

Link: http://www.gia.edu/cs/Satellite?blobcol=gfile&blobheader=application%2Fpdf&blobheadername1=Content-Disposition&blobheadername2=MDT-Type&blobheadername3=Content-Type&blobheadervalue1=attachment%3B+filename%3DThe-Jade-Enigma&blobheadervalue2=abinary%3B+charset%3DUTF-8&blobheadervalue3=application%2Funknown&blobkey=id&blobtable=GIA_DocumentFile&blobwhere=1355958492990&ssbinary=true

Charll

[George]

I have not read through that article Charll , so the following may well be in there..

But I found that legitimate jade minerals are not in the serpentine group. Nephrite is in the amphibole group and jadeite is a pyroxene group mineral.

[David]

Hello Charll,

Thank you for sharing the document, I will read it tonight again. I understand and agree with what you prefer (concrete, step-by-step and scientific), but occasionally there are things that need to just have faith in experienced elders.

I believe old Chinese nephrite is one of them. I heard that every mine or region/layers produces different kind of nephrite. Some of these are single mine source, once exhausted there is no more. (Kind of like true velvet Kashmir Sapphires or mutton fat jade used to carve the life like piece of pork belly fat or multitudes of abalone, meat, brownish/yellow fruit/food.).

Supposedly, every dynasty (or some timeframe) tend to have different kind of nephrite that were first found. Then the sources dry up by exhaustion or by war/politics. Then new sources were found.

I read (in a western book) that they actually use nephrite type to date start point of some jade carving, then use carve style, motif and tool mark to narrow it down.

So, for old Chinese nephrite, experience might count more than scientific.

But for Jadeite (excluding Ink Jade or Omphacite) , I totally agree with you as they are really single sourced from a small region in Burma and should be able to be characterized.

Best Regards,
David

[David]

Dear George,

I can't recall which book I read that from, but I found this on a more respectable (Wiki is sometimes not too reliable on minor subjects as non-expert users sometimes goes back/forth changing it)  source on the net

http://www.geo.utexas.edu/courses/347k/redesign/gem_notes/jade/jade_main.htm

Jadeite is a mineral that is restricted in occurrence to certain metamorphic rocks that have undergone metamorphism at high pressures but relatively low temperatures. Jadeite jade is found exclusively as nodular or lens-shaped masses in serpentinite. Nephrite jade, which is also a product of metamorphism (and fluid infiltration), does not apparently require the very special P-T conditions of jadeite and is much more widespread. It is also found in association with serpentinite in all known localities. Because of its extreme toughness in contrast to the weaker material it forms in (serpentine), jade is nearly always found as weathered boulders and cobbles in stream deposits or glacial sediment. Historically and presently important jade producing localities are:

I bolded the Jadeite and made the Nephrite red.

I recall hearing that some carvings are this kind of mix. And the older generations really do not care what is a nephrite as defined by the west. Jade is jade (basically any hard stone -not gem- pretty, rare, durable, can take a nice carve/polish).

So they say  , until they need to sell it.

Warmly,
David