The power of jade | financial times

Jade has been treasured in China for millennia, as a rare gem considered more precious than gold or diamonds and as a store of wealth believed to possess powerful talismanic properties. Now the Stone of Heaven is making its presence felt in Western jewelry.

Jade is a general generic term for two different minerals: jadeite and nephrite. They are among the hardest and strongest minerals on earth. About 5,000 years ago, nephrite, the most common and most opaque variety, was used for tools, weapons, ritual objects, and funerary decorations. Jadeite, which is much rarer and brilliantly translucent, only reached China in the 18th century, arriving there from the mines of Burma (now Myanmar). It took until 1863 to be recognized as a separate mineral, designated jadeite. The finest specimens, with their fascinating emerald green hue, were the prerogative of the emperor and his royal court, resulting in the term “imperial jadeite”.

Cool to the touch, sometimes with electromagnetic properties and a musical resonance when struck, jade is believed to be imbued with spiritual power. Once seen as a link between heaven and earth, the stone was believed to calm the path to the other world and to embody the Confucian virtues of wisdom, justice, compassion, purity and modesty. Today, jadeite is still believed to bring good fortune and prosperity.

We’re trying to disrupt the jadeite industry.

Asprey recently released a collection of jeweler’s and objects made exclusively of imperial jadeite – perhaps unexpected, for such a quintessentially British brand. However, as President John Rigas explains, Asprey sold fashionable jade jewelry in the late 1920s and 1930s, during the Orientalist craze. This was the time when the great personalities of the West coveted jade jewelry and objects: Barbara Hutton’s famous necklace of jade beads, with a ruby ​​and diamond clasp, was made for her by Cartier in 1933 and sold for $27.44 million at Sotheby’s Hong Kong in 2014. “Jade has great historical and cultural significance,” Rigas says, adding that he sees jadeite as the next must-have piece for collectors who already own rarities like colored diamonds. or natural pearls. “Our clients have always sought luxuries they couldn’t find anywhere else.”

With his team in London, Rigas spent several years researching the subject, but only when he was offered a stash of imperial jadeite, held in a private archive, was he able to begin work on a collection. (Ethical supplies of new imperial jadeite are hard to come by, due to the political and geological situation in Myanmar.)

Asprey’s raw jadeite is shaped by expert carvers in China and then set in Asprey’s London workshops into jewellery, including tactile bead necklaces; a circular lavender jadeite pendant, symbolizing heaven and eternity; and a necklace and bracelet of increasingly rare luminous red jadeite.

Rigas is on a mission to establish jadeite as a rare and historic resource for collectors around the world. To bring transparency to a notoriously opaque marketplace, and to standardize assessment, Asprey has joined forces with the University of Oxford’s department of earth sciences, using the most advanced equipment to instigate the brand’s own expert certification system. Each of the jadeite jewelry comes with a complete certificate that identifies and describes the material. “We want to set a new western standard for jade, a higher level of expertise to provide security and confidence,” says Rigas. “We are trying to disrupt an industry.”

European brands and maisons are adding momentum to the jade journey. Boghossian, the Geneva-based jeweler known for his expertise in colored gemstones and with a history of trading along the Silk Road from China, has created a jade necklace that reinvents the styles worn by officials of high rank of the Qing dynasty. Historically authentic, the necklace is comprised of seven jadeite beads connected by carved gourd-shaped jadeite elements and linked by diamonds and emeralds.

At Chopard, creative director Caroline Scheufele has also added jade to her palette, in dramatic earrings that combine the gem with titanium, enhancing its translucency, as part of her high jewelry collection. “It’s an intriguing contrast between a historic, traditional stone and a contemporary, state-of-the-art material,” explains Scheufele. “Stone presents many different opportunities for style and color. Green jade represents wisdom and peace, white jade embodies purity and serenity, blue jade loyalty and truth, while black jade is associated with strength and power.

In Cartier’s latest high jewelry collection, Le Voyage Recommencé, the ever-present and iconic panther appears as a sculpted black nephrite jade, set as a brooch, in white gold, adorned with a single pear-shaped rubellite and diamond eyes. .

moussaieff, also has a long history of trade in the east, and Alisa Moussaieff herself often wears a necklace of jadeite beads. In one bracelet, rare jadeite cabochons alternate with old-cut diamonds, while in a more traditional style, Moussaieff also offers a set of three rare jade bracelets for children. She describes the excellent quality material that she uses as fei cui- the Chinese name for a brightly colored bird and often used as a term for imperial jadeite.

Meanwhile, individual jeweler-designers are exploring creative possibilities. In Carnet, Michelle Ong combines a jade bracelet with triple rings and arabesques in an 18th-century French spirit, while a green and lavender gourd-shaped jade pendant/brooch is set with colored gemstones in European style. degrade style. born in taiwanese ana hu pays homage to its roots while playing with bold color schemes, such as in the Celestial Lotus ring, which features a central imperial jadeite flower cabochon nestled among yellow diamond and diamond-clad petals and a band of diamonds and tsavorite garnet . In London, designer and jeweler Ming, who grew up in Hong Kong, adds smooth carved links of nephrite and jade to a handmade gold chain necklace. And in the US, master goldsmith Sean Gilson creates theatrical earrings with carved openwork jadeite in white or orange, both paired with vibrant gemstones.

As a master carver wallace-chan says: “The stone itself is attractive, but the stories that accompany it are part of its identity and fascination. Whether it is a cicada, a pea or a dragon, a jadeite jewel is never just an ornament. Each piece of jadeite comes with its own destiny, and it may take years of experience for a skilled carver to solve the mystery: whether it is a cabochon, a carving, a pendant, or something else entirely.”