Authenticating Chinese Art Ancient and Archaic Nephrite Jade Carvings

Hello, my name is Joseph Sharon and I would like to speak with you about how to authenticate ancient and archaic nephrite jade carvings. I'll talk a little bit about jadeite. Jadeite can be dyed, it can be enhanced. It's a grainy stone. It's not like nephrite jade. Nephrite jade is a fibrous stone and the dyes cannot penetrate into the stone because it's a fibrous material. Dyes and chemicals cannot penetrate into the stone in a short period of time because it will just lay on the surface and if they used an acid or something like that on nephrite jade it would just lay on the top and eat away the top layer of the stone. If it would even do that it would probably do nothing. There's no way to enhance these pieces to make them look like the burial inclusions I'm about to show you. These types of burial only occur in nephrite jade when it's been buried a long period of time and the expansion and contraction of the stone and the elements in the soil actually infiltrate the stone and create these inclusions. It's a slow, slow process. There are several different types of inclusions on burial inclusions. One would be veining, rivers, clouding, russet inclusions, brown inclusions, calcification. These things occur only when a piece has been buried for a long period of time and the elements in the soil will actually penetrate the nephrite jade. If you try to dye it, it will just lay on the top of the surface. It will not penetrate into the stone. If you try chemicals it just won't work. It will ruin the stone or it just won't penetrate. Now I'm going to try and go through these pieces. This has a lot of brown inclusions and russet brown inclusions. It has some veins and rivers and a lot of clouding on this side. You have to look into the stone to see this. It's penetrated the stone. It's a celadon stone and it shows a lot of burial inclusions. It's a 6th Dynasty horse. Here's another stone here. You can see it's penetrated the stone. It's not just laying on the surface. It's actually penetrated into the stone. These russet inclusions apparently was buried down in the soil and over a long period of time the russet elements seeped into the jade and almost formed an outer skin to it. Now jade, nephrite jade, when it's in the raw generally has a skin to it. They cut away that skin because it's not good for carving. They cut away all the skin and all the inclusions and start carving the piece because the further you go in the cleaner the stone is. But this is a 6th Dynasty mythical animal. It's a beautiful little piece and it shows some veining and inclusions that actually penetrate into the stone. It's a beautiful piece. This recumbent hound also shows it penetrated into the stone. It's not just laying on the surface. You see some rivers here and striations. You see some veining here, russet veining and russet that infiltrated the ear. This clearly is a piece that has been buried for a long period of time in a slow, slow process of the elements in the soil infiltrating into this piece, into the jade material. Now this piece here is made of onion jade and you can see the russet inclusions, rivers and veins on this piece. Onion jade is just no longer available in China. It was used centuries ago and it's not available today for carving. This Sung Dynasty hound has the russet and the veins and the rivers on it. This piece here shows a lot of veins and brown inclusions and rivers. It's a very, very nice little piece. It has the one leg that's tilted to the side and this is an indication that it was carved in the Sung Dynasty. The way the ears are shaped, and these are all indications that it was carved during the Sung period. It's a Sung Dynasty Celadon cat. Now this piece here is a Han Dynasty piece. Both of these pieces are Han Dynasty pieces. You can see the shape of the head is very similar to each piece. This one piece is a pendant and it's not carved on the one side. One side is not carved and the other side is carved with Han Dynasty carvings. It has a lot of inclusions, russet inclusions and veins. It's a wonderful pendant and it's from the Han Dynasty. This is how you can tell little subtleties the way things are. The ears are carved, the head is shaped, little subtleties of pieces that are known to be from the Han Dynasty. You pick up these pieces and you can generally tell when a piece was carved and the type of style they used during those different periods throughout the history of China. This piece shows the muscle structure which is rather typical in a lot of animals. Not all the animals, but a lot of animals have this. They show the muscles and the pieces during the Han Dynasty. This is an onion jade piece with a lot of russet rivers and veins. It's just a wonderful piece. Now go to here. This piece is a pendant and it's a wonderful piece. It's heavily included from the Warring States period. It shows some rivers and veins in it and some slight areas of calcification, starting of calcification. It has a lot of brown inclusions that penetrate into the jade and through from one side to the next. This piece is just a wonderful masterpiece of Warring States jade carving. Here's another piece here, another pendant. This piece is a ribbon formed dragon and it shows a lot of veining throughout the whole piece, a lot of brown inclusions, calcification on the outside and on the head. It's just a beautiful ribbon form piece from the Warring States. This piece here is another pendant. This pendant was buried with bronze. You can tell it was buried with bronze because the bronze would seep these elements from the bronze itself and create this green in the piece. It would seep into the jade over a long period of time being buried next to bronze or with bronze in the same tomb. This piece is a wonderful pendant and it shows calcification up here, over here, here, here, here, here, and brown inclusions, rusted inclusions, and the green from being buried with bronze. It shows that so this piece was buried with ancient or archaic bronze artifacts in the same tomb. Here's another piece here. This is a highly stylized jade camel, a nephrite jade camel, and it's beautiful material. It's loaded with veins and rivers and a lot of brown and then there's a white on top of the brown and rusted on top of the white. It's just a beautiful, beautiful piece, highly stylized camel from the Sixth Dynasties. Here's another piece here. This is a highly stylized elephant and this is done around the Warring States period. It's a wonderful piece. It shows a lot of inclusions, veining. It shows rusted inclusions. It shows a little bit of everything in this piece. And it's a magnificent work of art. It's a vessel and it has this phoenix finial and it's just a great, great work of art. Here's another piece here. It shows clouding in the stomach area here and inside and clouding is just as important as any of the other inclusions. It expands and contracts in the soil and slowly the elements seep into the jade and create this clouding effect in the jade so that you know this piece was buried for a period of time and created this clouding. It's a slow process with the expansion and contraction and seeps into the jade from the soil. And this is a Ming Dynasty mythical animal. This piece here is a recumbent hound from the Sung Dynasty and it shows inclusions. You can see it penetrating into the stone and the on the base here it shows some veins and the penetration of the inclusions right through the one leg and a lot of clouding throughout the piece. And you can see this clouding. It's an old piece and it's been buried for a long period of time. Now this piece here, a dealer from New England took a picture of it and put it on a site and said it was a fake piece. He's a liar and a cheat and a thief and he sells a lot of provincial ceramics and they made billions of those pieces and they're not what they're presented to be. But if I took this collection to one of the auction houses they're going to tell me you know it's been enhanced or it's chemically treated. They're going to lie and as a matter of fact I took pieces up to Bonham's. I did a video on it. The guy examined my pieces and he said that the the roux ware was modern and he never handled a piece of roux ware in his life before that. A specialist from Bonham's told me that. And also the jade he said it was all enhanced with chemicals and he's a liar. He's a liar and a cheat and they discriminate against people. They discriminate against me and many other collectors that collect the Chinese art and they're cheating customers. These auction houses are cheating customers out of billions of dollars because they don't show the best pieces on the marketplace and they keep continually selling old collections that have very poor quality pieces because they have to sell those collections because they presented them as being so rare and so important and they tell their collectors to buy them because people don't educate themselves and know what to look for and know what a good piece is. So remember when you're purchasing jade make sure it's a translucent jade, nephrite jade. It can't be scratched with a knife. It has inclusions. Make sure the inclusions penetrate into the jade itself. It's not just laying on the top and there's several types of inclusions and all these pieces have those types of inclusions on them and they're all burial pieces. You can go to my website at www.chinesemasterpieces.com and get further information and see more jades. And I'd like to thank you for watching this video and I hope it's helpful and I hope it solves some of the misinformation out there about jade and all the misinformation and wives tales that they tell about jade. It's a lot of lies because the auction houses want to stay in control over the collectors. They don't want to educate the collectors and thank you for watching the video.