Jade Carved Asian Panda

Taupou, when I bought my jade in a very good shop in BC, they were absolutely honest about it being carved in China. Apparently, a great deal of BC jade is exported to China, some then coming back, carved. That's because the jade carving skills are so prolific and expert, apparently. Mine's a nice thing, I'll see if I can get a decent photo.

 

IMAGE BY: DARRELL LECORRE (TOP)
Jade is China’s national stone and seen as a bridge between Heaven and Earth. It’s the must-wear gem of the rising Chinese middle class. All of which makes some miners in northern B.C. – home to more high-quality jade than anywhere else on earth – very, very happy.

ON A RECENT VISIT to China’s western frontier, Kirk Makepeace, a Surrey-based jade entrepreneur, made an extraordinary discovery. In the city of Hotan, at the edge of the Taklimakan Desert, Makepeace noticed that the Uygur (Chinese Muslim) merchants were selling jewelry made of bright green jade. To the average tourist, this would be a singularly unremarkable fact. Hotan, after all, has been the world centre of jade since long before Marco Polo travelled the Silk Road. But Makepeace is no average tourist: he knows jade as well as anyone on Earth, and something about the translucent deep green of the gemstone prompted him to take a closer look. What he found delighted him. “All jade has a fingerprint,” he says, recalling the trip, “and I could see it was British Columbia jade they were selling. Imagine that! No way did I expect to see our jade in the Mecca of jade!”

What the merchants were doing – passing B.C. jade off as native Chinese jade – may not have been ethical, but they were inadvertently paying tribute to the excellence of a little-known homegrown product. In its quality and look, our B.C. stone passes for real Hotan jade – “the Stone of Heaven,” as the Chinese call it, which draws buyers to this Chinese market in droves. The “Hotan” jade bracelets (selling for three or four times the price they’d fetch in North America) are carved from B.C. jade because the Chinese have virtually exhausted their own supply.

Canny entrepreneur that he is, Makepeace said nothing about the deception; the people buying and selling the jade are, after all, at the extreme end of his marketing chain. For all he cares, the Hotan merchants can make any claim they want about the provenance of the stone they are selling. They are contributing, in their own way, to a promising Canadian niche industry.

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WE ALL THINK WE KNOW JADE when we see it, but the word “jade” actually refers to two very different stones that look very much alike. China’s historic jade is nephrite, famous as the toughest stone on Earth and known for its rich resinous texture when polished. Nephrite is the jade that B.C. has in abundance. Its chemical structure is completely different from jadeite, found primarily in Myanmar (Burma). Jadeite is beautiful, and rare, and even though it’s a relative newcomer in the Asian jade trade (the 1700s) it became China’s pre-eminent gemstone over the past two centuries, and that’s at the root of the confusion between the two stones. (The Chinese use the word “yu” to refer to both kinds of jade.)

 

komokwa, I bought jade jewellery in BC as well. Nicely set in silver.

 

Hi,
Be still my heart. Looking at those jade boulders reminds me of a wonderful time. I was in India and friends took me to a canyon and waterfall that was a giant piece of tigerseye. It had to be almost 500 ft long. You are not allowed to chop off pieces but can "pan" the creek bed down stream for pebbles. I brought home about 10 pounds worth. I had them made into jewelry and keychains for everybody that year. Now I have to add B.C. to my bucket list.
greg

 

Vancouver was like my 2nd home.
from 1989 to 99 I was there twice a year on buying trips.
The amount of BC jade carvings in Robson St. tourist shops threatened to sink downtown into the center of the earth ....just from the weight !!!

 

Personally, I wouldn't necessarily call this a replica or knock-off of Native American styles; but I would say that it does not show any of the characteristics of actual native work, whether Inuit or NW Coast Native.
It would take a fairly long essay to state what those characteristics are....conventions in eye, nose and mouth shapes, among many others; but there are good books on the subject of Northwest Coast Native style; Bill Holm, "Northwest Coast Indian Art: an Analysis of Form." Hilary Stewart, "Looking at Indian Art of the Northwest Coast"
Here are some images of Inuit bears: Bears
Speaking as one who is quite familiar with NW Coast native and Inuit both, this does not display the usual forms for either. It does look like some kind of jade to me, though.
And it is also true that many very similar carvings are made in China.
And there is indeed a tradition of jade carving in BC: http://jade-carvers.com/workshop-events/jade-carving-workshop-vernon-bc/