There are so few pieces of icy jade in the Forbidden City?

Jade has not been around in China for long. It was introduced to China during the Qing Dynasty. It was also because of the pursuit of the Qing Dynasty royal family that jade gradually received attention. Therefore, today, there are still a large number of Qing Dynasty jades hidden in the Forbidden City, with a number of more than 800 pieces. However, some people have discovered that among so many jade collections, there is basically no ice jade.

1. What are the jades in the Forbidden City?

The jadeite collection in the Forbidden City all comes from the Qing Dynasty, with the largest number of collections from the period when Cixi was in power. Most of these jadeite collections are old mine jadeite, but the quality is not good. The quality of these collections is relatively average, and most of them cannot even reach the ice quality.

The decorative patterns are bats and the Chinese character for longevity. “Bat” sounds like “blessings all over the world”, which is a symbol of blessing in traditional Chinese culture. When paired with the Chinese character for longevity next to it, it has the meaning of “blessings and longevity”, which is very auspicious.

Although this color box does not look very good, the color looks very refreshing, the texture of the jade is very delicate, and the exquisite craftsmanship makes the color box look very neat and exquisite.

This is another jadeite object with a white background and green material. It was used to wash brushes in the study in ancient times. The overall workmanship is very delicate and the shape is vivid and unique. The color, which was not originally perfect, adds a lot of freshness and agility to this brush washer.

Why was it that even the jadeite items in the palace in that era could not reach the ice grade? In fact, it is mainly due to the following reasons:

1. Mining technology restrictions at the origin

Even in today's technologically advanced world, Myanmar's jade mining technology is still relatively backward, not to mention the mining technology during the Qing Dynasty, which basically could only rely on manpower, and high-quality jade raw materials buried deep inside were difficult to dig out. Therefore, most of the jade on the market is relatively close to the surface and is easy to mine, and the quality of these jades is generally average.

2. Most of the collections are large items

Most of the jade items collected in the Forbidden City today were daily necessities used by the royal family at that time. At that time, the nobles in the palace not only used jade to make jewelry, but were more keen on making jade into daily necessities, such as tea sets, tableware, snuff bottles and even decorative ornaments. Among the jade materials mined at that time, there were very few with good water quality. To make these things, the jade materials needed must be relatively large. However, once the size of the material is large, it is difficult to ensure the water quality at the same time.

3. People’s aesthetic cognition

In that era, people's perception of jade was not very similar to "transparency" except for its warmth. Jade at that time was basically nephrite, which had a relatively "solid" texture. The things that were usually associated with transparency were glass and other things.

The light of ice and glass-type jadeite looks very similar to glass visually, but does not have the "heaviness" of traditional jade, so it is very likely that people of that era tended to prefer jadeite such as glutinous jadeite.

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