The Natural Inherent Qualities of Jade Stone:
Jade is a gemstone known for its uniqueness and its appreciation of beauty is determined by the eye of the beholder. Nonetheless, the jade industry has created guidelines to assist people in reaching conclusions of the qualities in all types of jades. Hence, as 4 c’s in diamonds, evaluation of the three t’s to arrive to a consensus in the quality is inevitable namely the tone, texture and transparency.

Tone: Colours which are pure, penetrating and vivid are considered to be of the finest quality. However, some experts prefer jade which contain natural inclusions more commonly known as ‘spots’ that accentuate its magnificence.

Texture: Ranges from fine, medium to coarse. Fine texture, the most sought after texture, allows for a better polish and has better lustre and also smoothing when touched or held upon.

Transparency: Ranges from semi transparent to completely opaque. The widely conceived pinnacle of this category is of the former which allows light to penetrate the jade surface and protrudes its alluring brilliance by appearing to be glowing. However, some valued opaque more for they regard transparent being less traditionalistic.

Many of today’s coloured nephrite jade articles found from the earth were probably white when carved. That is because most of them are made of nephrite jade and nephrite is a porous mineral that absorbs substance from its surrounding environment. Thus, unless a white jade object was waxed with boiled animal fat, it will change colour during its time underground in the tomb due to the absorption of chemicals that came in contact with it. These include acids naturally present in the soil and activated by the groundwater; iron rust and bronze metal decay products from other tomb articles; decomposition products from the body of the deceased and chemicals like cinnabar, a reddish mercury compound placed around the tomb for “happiness and protection of the spirit” when it arose from the body in the afterlife.

But many ancient chinese jades were colourful when they were made, because the raw stone was found with those colours inherent to it. During many dynasties naturally coloured jade articles was preferred, specially in the Han period and much of the medieval, the independent colouring of nephrite jades a reddish tone was actively practiced by some collectors and carvers. Primarily these were produced to satisfy the desires of the nobleman who had commissioned the piece.