554 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1961 



ture sculptures, ornamental inlays, and jewelry. Most of them have 

 special appeal because they are hard and have a pleasing appearance, 

 luster, and color. Many of these stones are inherently beautiful and 

 require no modeling — only polishing — to bring out their artistic quali- 

 ties. Perhaps first among these are two minerals which are collectively 

 known as jade. One of them is a hard mineral made of the sodium 

 almninum silicate, a member of the pyroxene group now called by its 

 scientific name "jadeite." It was employed by the aborigines of 

 Guatemala and other parts of Central America for carving and orna- 

 mental purposes. The Spanish conquistadores called it piedra de 

 ijada, or "stone of the side," because when worn on the loins it was 

 supposed to cure kidney ailments. In the collection of the Honorable 

 Kobert Woods Bliss, now on loan to the National Gallery of Art in 

 Washington, one can see many fine examples of worked jadeite from 

 Central America, including small images, ceremonial weapons, and 

 mlays which vary in color from yellowish green to gray to black [7] . 

 Perhaps the most familiar type of jadeite is that which comes mainly 

 from Burma and is colored or mottled a bright emerald green from 

 impurities of chromium. A selected variety of green jadeite called 

 "imperial jade" is highly prized in the lapidary trade. 



The name "jade" is also given, by modern lapidarists, to a tough, 

 hard stone which was valued by the ancient Chinese who called it yii. 

 It is nephrite, a variety of amphibole or calcium magnesium silicate 

 which is translucent white when pure, but there are colored varieties 

 ranging through pale green, spinach green, and yellowish brown to 

 black. Quantities of exquisitely worked nephrite have come from 

 Chinese tombs of the first and second millenniums B.C. These are 

 mostly ceremonial objects, small ornaments, figurines, and inlays [8]. 

 The Freer Gallery of Art has a collection of nearly 500 nephrite 

 objects from early Chinese tombs, among them many masterpieces of 

 fine and delicate workmanship. It is believed that the main source 

 of this nephrite was Chinese Turkestan in innermost Asia, where the 

 jade was found in boulders in beds of streams which flowed out of the 

 K'un-km Mountains in the vicinity of Khotan. A Russian writer, 

 Kretchetova, says that nephrite was a matter of particular importance 

 in the trade from Khotan to China. By order of the Chinese rulers, 

 un wrought pieces of jade by thousands of pounds were brought to 

 China over the great "silk roads" from the west. He adds that the 

 Imperial treasury consisted to a considerable extent of jade and jas- 

 per; the lack of it meant that the treasury was exhausted [9J. Dark 

 green or "spinach jade" came mostly from the Lake Baikal region 

 of Siberia. Many extraordinary pieces of nephrite carving have come 

 out of ancient royal tombs in China dating from the first millennimn 

 B.C. Some exceptional nephrite ceremonial axes and blades about 

 30 inches long, 8 inches wide, and only about a quarter of an inch 



