10 december 2007, Asianart.com
When President Nixon stepped off the plane in Shanghai in 1972 he did more than just restore relations with China. His visit led to a series of increasingly impressive exhibits in the United States of ancient Chinese artifacts that excited the public’s interest. Ancient jades, bronzes, paintings, calligraphies—previously the domain of a few academics and connoisseurs—captured the imagination of collectors worldwide.

Chinese jades are a particularly fascinating area of Chinese decorative arts. No material is more closely associated with China than jade, a stone the Chinese have used and revered for over 7000 years. But whenever growing numbers of collectors are chasing a fixed number of archaic and antique items, a profusion of copies, reproductions, and fakes arises to meet the demand. This article provides some hints on how to avoid being taken in when collecting Chinese jades. The focus is on older Chinese jades, which are typically carved from nephrite jade. A future article will provide some advice on jadeite, the most common jewelry jade.

A collector about to acquire an old Chinese jade confronts three fundamental questions: Is it jade? Is it Chinese? And, most challenging of all, is it old? Let’s address these one at a time.