Beautiful jade!

This  month's blog is a bit of a cop-out as it is so easy.  But I don't apologise for that - I want to show off some of the beautiful facets of nephrite.  It's not always the highly translucent stone which grabs my attention.  Nor is it the stone that takes the best polish.  The beauty comes at different scales and times.  First, just looking at the rough rock can show lots of interesting features and colours.  Then when the rock is cut or slabbed it shows different aspects of beauty.  And as I carve it, using finer and finer grades of grit, the features I may appreciate most are the imperfections - the odd crystals or veins, the little splashes of different colours, the texture and more.  I could go on and on.  But won't for a change!

Below are a series of pictures, some taken with a 15x macro lens and others with a 30x phonescope attachment on my phone to give greater magnification.  They show up many of the finer features I mention above.

Figure 1 shows the unusual texture of the nephrite often found in stone from Lillooet, BC.  These small rounded, pale blebs are harder than the surrounding minerals and can make it really difficult to get a good finish.  There are many (mostly sealed) fractures you can also see going from lower left to upper right at about 60 degrees to the horizontal.  You can also see some saw cut arcs - please igore those!  (1x)

Figure 2 shows a small section of a lovely slab of stone from the Yukon.  There's lots going on here!  The stone is microcrystalline and has high translucency.  There are small crystals , probably of an iron mineral, at the centre of the small white areas, suggesting they have drawn the iron out of the nephrite when it was semi-liquid.  The white veins indicate late-stage flow of that mineral mix and are sealed.  Now compare those with the thin fracture with a darker halo around  it.  You know the latter is open and has allowed groundwater to travel along it and leach out some of the minerals.  Lovely stone though!  (2x)

Figure 3 shows a slightly scratched face of South Westland pounamu.  Here again you have sealed flow-ways (you can see the movement!) and chunks of the previous rock which were frozen when the temperature dropped below a certain threshhold.  Here again you have small iron-rich crystals and some of the pure white crystals.  It's a beautiful stone!  (15x)

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Figure 4 shows what the boundary between the white and green nephrite looks like.  Individual crystals have grown on one-another and the translucency of the green is approaching transparency.  Just gorgeous!  (30x)

​Figures 5 & 6 show a slab of South Westland again, the top one in reflected light, showing the pure white crystals and the dark green of the mass of the stone, and the lower one the same section of stone with back-lighting, showing how different lighting produces radically different outcomes.

​Are you seeing why I never get tired of looking at nephrite, and working it?  (2x)

​Figure 7 shows the face of a piece of nephrite , probably South Westland stone, with many micro-fractures running parallel to one-another.  The curtain-upon-curtain look is beautiful!  (30x)

​Figure 8 is back to the macro view and shows some interesting dark markings on a slab of Cowell.  As the marks go through the slab I guess they are from algae.  Alternatively, they are from an early sedimentary process, maybe small iron concretions which were retained in the rock during metamorphism.  Here again there is a paler halo indicating they were drawing iron out of the surrounding rock.  Please feel free to let me know what they really are!?  (2x)

Figure 9 shows the very variable mineralogy of a coarsely crystallized South Westland pounamu.  There are beautifully translucent pale green grains, some white flecks and crystals, and some darker, brownish grains.  You can see the coarseness of the crystals by the pock-marked surface!  (30x)

​Figure 10 shows a fleck of pyrite in a piece of South Westland.  You can also see how there are dark translucent crystals which were starting to grow in the pervading mass of pale greenish opaque microcrystalline nephrite.  And then it all froze!  (30x)

Figure 11 shows a highly translucent piece of pounamu with small iron-rich crystals as well as translucent pale green and less translucent colourless crystals.  A beautiful piece of stone!  (30x)

I hope you've enjoyed the close look at a few pieces of nephrite and agree with me that the  beauty is more than skin-deep!  Each piece of stone rewards taking a handlens to it.

​Enjoy!