Whether the jade is machine-carved or hand-carved, you will know after reading this

If jade is not carved, it cannot become a useful object. A good piece of jade is made up of three parts material and seven parts workmanship. In addition to good water quality, exquisite carving is also very important. Only through delicate craftsmanship can the soul and charm of jade be highlighted.

△ Artificial carving

Most people's impression of jade is that it is carved by jade carvers stroke by stroke, and this impression remains in the last century. With the development of technology, machine carving appeared and is becoming more and more popular.

△ Artificial carving

Simply put, machine carving uses pre-made molds and adopts ultrasonic, vibration or more advanced laser engraving. It is extremely efficient. Manual carving usually takes several days to carve one piece, while machine carving can batch produce hundreds of pieces a day, and each finished product is almost exactly the same.

△Machine carving

The original manual carving has changed a lot from before. The traditional full manual carving almost no longer exists. Manual carving also requires the use of modern equipment such as various high-speed diamond drills and grinding heads. Although the final product still depends entirely on the craftsmanship of the sculptor, the manual component has been relatively reduced a lot.

△ Artificial carving

△Machine carving

Although machine carving meets the industry's demand for high production, there is still a lot of controversy. Many people believe that machine-carved jade is too rigid, lacks the soul of jade, and lacks the spirituality and artistic conception of manual carving. In this case, how can we distinguish whether the jade we buy is machine-carved or hand-carved? It can be distinguished in several ways.

1. Look at the material

The so-called "good material and good workmanship", machine carving usually does not have very good materials, mostly bean-type, glutinous type, white-bottomed green, oily green, and miscellaneous materials, and the water quality is usually poor. Artificial carving generally uses better materials, such as old pit ice type and glass type materials, which are basically not available for organic carving.

△Machine carving

2. Look at the lines

In order to facilitate demoulding, machine-carved pieces often have uniform edges and are very flat. The inner concave part has a certain slope, but no inward arc, and the lines are stiff and rigid.

△Machine carving

The lines of manual carving are soft and smooth, and the edges or interior may have inward concave arcs or hollowed-out treatments.

△ Artificial carving

3. Look at the details

Because the mold of machine carving will wear out, the carving of new molds will be slightly better, but the details will become more blurred as time goes by, and there will not be very fine carvings. For example, the teeth of Buddha and the hair of Guanyin may not be clear. Manual carving excludes the situation where inexperienced apprentices carve, and the details are generally clearer and crisper, and can even be super-finely processed.

△Machine carving

4. Look at the complexity

Machine carvings usually produce simple shapes with a weaker sense of three-dimensionality. The human figures do not have any vivid expressions and are mostly reliefs. Hand-carved jade carvings have a strong sense of three-dimensionality and can produce very complex shapes. Experienced jade carvers will also skillfully carve according to the color and avoid carving into jade material flaws.

△ Artificial carving

5. Look at the orange peel structure

The best evidence of a hand-carved work is that no matter how it is polished later, there will always be some residual carving marks. What about jade carvings that are pressed using molds and polished by machines? There will be an orange peel structure on its surface, and there will be a feeling of blockage when you press it. This structure can be observed or scratched with a magnifying glass or fingernails. For example, the entire machine-carved work in the picture below presents an orange peel structure.

△Machine carving

Although machine-carved jade is controversial, imagine a piece of jade worth 500 yuan. If it is carved manually, it will cost 2,000 yuan. The price advantage of machine carving will be reflected. The disadvantage of machine carving is that the quantity is large and the products are similar, but at the same time it also eliminates some jade carvers with low standards and promotes the improvement of manual carving.

△Machine carving

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