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- methods, some of which take a tremendous amount of painstaking work and time, include burning, boiling, burying, greasing, rubbing with the thumb, and dyeing or staining. Among these methods, the artificial colouring of the jade is perhaps the most difficult effect to achieve. The jade objects to be stained are placed in a dye and cooked at boiling temperature. The dye penetrates to about one millimetre beneath the surface, and is unremovable. Different chemicals used in the pro�cess result in various discolourations.
By heating jade to 1025 degrees centigrade, the surface turns yellowish-white and becomes covered with minute cracks, almost like bone. Hence this effect is called jigu bai or chicken-bone white.
Since many ancient jades were looted from tombs and passed through many hands, they received a few knocks here and there along the way. It is quite rare to find a very old jade artifact in good condition. Therefore, another effective method to imitate age in a jade carving is to damage it. There are several ways of doing this: lightly knocking the jade against stone to produce small white spots or fractures, chipping the edges or mouthrims of the jade pieces, and even going as far as break�ing the piece and then gluing it together again or simply selling part of the damaged piece.3 Damage can also be caused by certain methods of cutting with a small em�ery wheel or diamond drill, which cause round or oval pits of different depth and grooves of different lengths. Hair-fine scratches can be achieved by rubbing the jade object with sand, which gives the impression that the piece has passed through many hands.
Another method of faking ancient jades is to add inscriptions to a piece. Ancient jades were rarely inscribed, and the presence of an inscription no matter how �lapi�dary� always seems exceptional.4 Even Emperor Qianlong was fond of adding in�scriptions to jade pieces. Sometimes an inscription with his name like �Da Qing Qianlong Fanggu� or �Qianlong Fanggu� was carved on ancient style jade pieces to make clear it was an imitation. At other times he seemed to want to give the im�pression of age by placing an inscription of an earlier time on it. For example, on De�cember 22, 1743 he ordered that an azure blue jade tiger carving be engraved with the number �13� on the right paw and that the stand which went with it, be carved with the inscription �Xuanhe Yu wan� (Imperial toy of Xuanhe). Xuanhe was one of the reign titles of the Song emperor Huizong (1100-26), whose name is associated with fine quality art objects.5
The outright copying of ancient jade styles and the doctoring of the jade material makes the work of the art historian very difficult in tracing style and forms of Chinese carved jades.
NOTES
1 Hansford, Chinese Carved Jades, 1968, p. 39.
2 Hansford, A Glossary of Chinese Art and Archaeology, London, 1954, p. 29.
3 Yang Boda, �Imitations of Old Jades,� Wenwu, No. 4, 1984, p. 73.
4 Loehr, op. cit., p. 15.
5 Yang Boda, �Imitations...,� op. cit., p. 70.
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