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- right up until the early twentieth century when they were replaced by man-made carborundum. Even with better abrasives, jade carving still remained difficult and time-consuming. Sir Howard Hansford, who studied Chinese jade carving in the early twentieth century, noted that a single cut through a one-foot cube of jade using carborundum took two men several weeks to complete.5 Asa result of jade�s incredible toughness, it takes up to fifty tons of pressure to crush some large pieces, while other pieces can only be broken by heating, then plunging into cold water. Therefore, with this knowledge, one should really appreciate the tremen�dous amount of patient and difficult work it must have taken the ancients to com�plete a single jade object with their primitive tools. Today, power-driven diamond saws and drills make the process of carving jade much easier.
Until recently scholars felt that since ancient times jade was obtained mainly outside of China proper from boulders in the riverbeds of Khotan and Yarkand or mined from the Kunlun mountains of Chinese Turkestan. However, old Chinese records speak of native jade deposits in China proper, namely Lantian (Shaanxi province), Jiuquan (Gansu province), Xiuyan (Liaoning province) and Nanyang (Henan province). After close examination of the so-called jades from the former three locations, they were found to be a variety of serpentine, but the jade-stone excavated from near the latter location contained jadeite and hornblende (which belongs to the same amphibole group as nephrite).6 Recent excavations of the Neolithic Liangzhu culture (about 3300-2250 B.C.) around Lake Tai (Jiangsu and Zhejiang provinces) have revealed many artifacts carved from tremolitic-actinolitic jade. Mr. Zheng Jian of the Huadong Institute of Geology in Nanjing has even suggested the mountain region south of Lake Tai in Zhejiang as the possible source of this early jade.7
Because jade was so sought after in China, it is possible that if there were na�tive deposits they would have become exhausted by historical times. During the Han period, Chinese records recognize that nephrite was obtained mainly from the mountains and rivers of Central Asia. This distant place, thousands of kilo�metres away, continued to be the most important source of jade for China until present times.
In the late eighteenth century, jadeite was introduced to China from Burma and became very popular because of its green colouration. The main sources of Bur�mese jade were found in the north, between 25� and 26� north latitude, west of Myitkyina at the Mogoung mines and near the Chindwin River.
A spinach green nephrite with black chromite flecks from Lake Baikal in Siberia was also imported to China for carving in the second half of the nineteenth century.
The vast majority of jade carved in China from prehistoric times to the present was nephrite. To the Chinese, this was the true jade (zhen yu). The items in this catalogue are nephrite unless otherwise specified.
Categories
The production of jade objects in China has existed for approximately 7,000 years, therefore, the output has been enormous. Jades in every shape and form served a myriad of functions, but can be broken down into five basic categories: tools and weapons, objects of daily use, ceremonial jades, burial jades, and ornaments.
The objects in the first category, tools and weapons, belong mainly to Neolithic and early historic times, and include tools such as chisels, adzes, axes and knives, and weapons like spearheads and daggers. In the category of objects for daily use are food and drinking vessels, chopsticks, brushrests, seals, etc. Ceremonial jades include various objects for religious worship such as the bi disc, huang half
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