Jade identification, it turns out these are the best methods

Since ancient times, jade jewelry has always been popular among the Chinese people. Every Chinese person has a jade dream in his or her heart. Xiao Yufe Jade firmly believes that jade will always be a very popular collection in the cultural and art circle.

However, today’s jade market is full of mixed goods, and it is difficult to distinguish between real and fake jade, so it is very necessary to master certain knowledge of jade jewelry identification! Of course, there are also many methods of jade identification on the Internet. What Xiaoyufeather Jade is going to introduce to you today are some very simple and practical identification methods that do not require the aid of any instruments. They are very useful. Let’s learn together.

The reason why jade is different from other jewelry and jade is because of its unique characteristics, which are also the best ways to identify jade:

1. Jadeite

Jadeite texture is the unique characteristic of jadeite, which can distinguish it from other similar jades and imitations.

The jadeite nature of jade is caused by the fact that the jadeite crystals that make up jade have two sets of complete cleavages. When jade breaks under the action of external force, the fracture surface and the adjacent grains break along the cleavage under the action of strong mechanical stress to form a cleavage plane. Because the cleavage surface is flat and smooth, it can produce mirror reflection of light, and many sparkling small faces can be seen under the light, like mosquito wings.

On the surface of jadeite that has been cut or not polished, the jadeite quality is very obvious. There are three main forms of jadeite quality:

1. Snow flakes: flake-shaped, more obvious shiny surfaces, usually caused by the cleavage planes of coarse-grained, short columnar jadeite particles;

2. Mosquito wings: narrow and long small shiny surfaces, caused by the cleavage planes of medium-coarse columnar to long-coarse columnar jadeite particles;

3. Sand stars: small, point-like, shiny surfaces caused by the cleavage surfaces of fine-grained columnar or fibrous jadeite particles.

After jade has gone through processes such as polishing and waxing, its jadeite properties are not easy to see, especially the sand star-shaped jadeite properties are particularly difficult to observe. On the surface, when the snowflake-shaped cleavage surface is not polished thoroughly, it will form a slightly concave surface with many small pits, which has clear boundaries with the surrounding areas and can still be seen in a certain direction with consistent reflection. If it is further polished, it will form the so-called orange peel effect.

2. Beans

"Bean" refers to the boundary between the grains of jade. When the boundaries of the grains are obvious, the "bean" phenomenon will appear. This situation often occurs in a structure where the grains are not tightly embedded, the boundaries are straight, and the particles are coarse.

Bean-shaped features mostly appear in jadeite with poor transparency, but there are some jadeite that, although the grains are coarse, different grains can be distinguished and the granular features can be seen, but the boundary lines are blurred. This is because the effects of heavy grains make the particles closely combined and the transparency is improved. In addition, you can also find the boundaries of the grains on the polished surface of jade to identify the particle size and morphological characteristics. The granular characteristics are also an identification mark of jade.

3. Orange Peel Effect

The polished surface of jade is often uneven like orange peel. The fundamental reason for this phenomenon lies in the properties and structure of the jadeite crystals that make up jade. The arrangement direction of jadeite particles in jade is inconsistent. For example, some have cylindrical parallel surfaces, some are oblique, and some are vertical. In terms of hardness, the particles exposed on the perpendicular cylindrical surface have the greatest hardness, while the particles exposed on the parallel cylindrical surface have a smaller hardness due to the development of cleavage and other reasons, and the particles exposed on the oblique cylindrical surface are in between the two. When polished using conventional polishing techniques, the softer particles are more abraded, resulting in a concave surface.

Therefore, the orange peel effect of jade is not just the uneven polished surface, the orange peel also has subtle and characteristic phenomena.

The obviousness of the orange peel effect depends on two factors: one is the nature of the jade structure. The smaller the particle size of the jadeite that makes up the jade and the tighter the bonding, the less obvious the orange peel effect will be. The other is the method and quality of polishing. The orange peel effect will be obvious with floppy disk polishing, but the opposite is true with hard disk polishing. The higher the hardness of the polishing powder, the less obvious the orange peel effect; the more thorough the polishing, the more obvious the orange peel effect.

Warm Tips: Based on the size and shape of the orange peel, you can identify the characteristics of the jadeite structure, which is an important feature to distinguish similar jades from imitations.

4. Contents

Jade is formed purely naturally, and pure natural things cannot avoid impurities, so the presence or absence of impurities is also a very important method to judge whether jade is A-grade jade. There are three main types of impurities in jade:

1. White cotton-like

Stone flowers are lumpy white flocs in jade. From a gemological point of view, stone flowers may also be inclusions in jade, that is, they may not be jadeite, but other mineral components, or they may be healed cracks. These white flocs resemble reed fluff and are characterized by radial distribution.

2. Black Spot

Black spots are the remnants and illusions of the iron ore being replaced by jadeite. They often appear black under reflected light, and the black spots are generally isolated and scattered.

3. Black Block

The black blocks are black, but appear as gray-brown spots when transmitted light. The black silk or black bands in jade are caused by alkaline hornblende or omphacite. The effect of alkaline hornblende must also be treated in different situations. If jadeite with green as the main color contains black hornblende, these black or dark minerals will have an adverse effect on the appearance of jadeite and should be treated as a clarity characteristic. However, if these dark minerals are contained in jade products that are mainly colorless or white, it will not have a negative impact on the appearance of the jade, but will increase the value of the jade products. At this time, these dark stripes are not regarded as clarity characteristics, but as color elements.

5. Color heel

Jade has a variety of colors, and each color has its own characteristic color distribution characteristics. The green color of jade is evenly distributed and often appears in vein shapes, called color heel, which is one of the important characteristics of jade.

6. Gloss

Gloss is the phenomenon caused by the reflection of light on a surface. The luster of a gemstone is affected by the degree of surface polish, the refractive index of the gemstone and the characteristics of the surface structure. Jade with good polish and dense texture can have glassy luster due to its smooth surface; jade with coarse texture has weaker luster and varies from sub-glassy to oily luster due to the influence of the gaps between grains and the orange peel effect. Some jadeite that has been acid-washed, filled or acid-washed has improper polishing technology, resulting in an orange peel effect and micro-gap development on the surface, resulting in a waxy luster that is weaker than oily luster.

The method to observe the luster of jade is: under normal lighting conditions, observe the degree of reflectivity on the surface of jade and the clarity of the image with the naked eye. Jade with a glassy luster can form a clear image. For example, against the clear image of light or window, jadeite with a waxy luster will only appear as a blurry image.

These are the characteristics of jade, and are also relatively simple, fast and effective methods to identify the authenticity of jade. Friends can use these methods when purchasing jade to identify the authenticity of their jade to avoid buying B-grade jade, C-grade jade, and jade B+C!

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