Myanmar Jade jewelry come in many variants, types, colors and shapes
Jade jewelry is popular as bracelets and bangles, rings, pendants, necklaces and earrings. Most better high priced item are from Burma often defined as Chinese jade because they either smuggle or export the rough stones to the biggest market from the mines in northern Myanmar. Once it's over the border it becomes China jade and they will make something nice out of it, actually this is usually not done by carving but by drilling.
Most popular colors are lavender, white and green for gorgeous body decoration. This jewelry is very popular among Chinese women who interpret all kind of mystic ideas into the stone plus a good portion of superstition.
This are usually stand alone pieces, means there is no other material included. But sometimes yellow and white gold plus silver is used to create a special piece of art, the metals reflect the light back and it get's really glowing.
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| Singapore Jade Shop |
When browsing through jade shops
in cities such as Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, Yangon, Hong Kong and other in recent times (2013) a steep price hike in quality material compared to the last few years is obvious.
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| Jade Jewelry Bracelet |
This is not the cheap stuff you can see at Amazon and similar online shops. Since people have more money in the pocket demand of the jade jewelry is soaring. Actually there is no real reason for that because there is enough jadeite and even much more nephrite.
Why Chinese People give such a high value to this mineral? Because it has some mystic values which can’t be put into numbers plus the art component since many objects for decoration are made by famous artists.
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| Lavender jade bangles |
Jade jewelry available in various forms and colors without any treatment beside of washing with plum juice and using bee wax for polishing. Another type is low quality material which is bleached and impregnated with polymer resin plus treated with a hydrolysis process and undergoing a oxygenation wash which is changing the physical structure of the stone and create different colors it also enhances translucency.
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| Colors and translucency |
The worst is when combining the process indicated before and add a dye session. The treated mineral looks great for about three years after it will deteriorate, loose color and actually can be thrown away, imagine you bought an expensive bangle for let’s say over $ 1000,- and its worthless after some time? Means when buying it needs to be very vigilant because you don't know what they know and the again are aware of this, also check the colors.
The more translucent, the higher the the value
It is sometimes a real challenge for a jade buyer to guess what could be in the stone he or she buys. It's not possible to look into the stone which means a lot of experience and luck is needed to select the the raw material to get a great piece of jewelry out of it afterwards.
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| Green jade pendant |
This is crucial when buying at an auction such as the Yangon emporium where most of jadeite is sold on a worldwide scale, its a risky business. Some seller cut the boulder which come straight from the mine to give a better insight, also drilling into the stone is done frequently since really nobody can look into.
Drilling is normal, carving usually means that, this one of the hardest material on earth.
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| Chinese carved nephrite bangle |
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| Chinese nephrite bangle |
In the age of electric machines it works at a reasonable speed but imagine how they created this items before, they used manual machine moving the drill by a string back and forward this was one of the reason why creating jade jewelry took always a extreme long time, even today some artist use this method.
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| Antique jade horse |
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| Antique nephrite |
Some real beautiful and expensive antique jade are made although with the stone the prices are usually always mainly related to the quality of the material itself premium prices are paid if a well known artist creates the object of desire and the people are willing to do this extra price add on.
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| Jadeite bracelets |
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| Jadeite bangles |
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| Rings with dark and bright cabochons |
The shopping season is whole year around except Mondays and open hours are 10 am to 5 pm.
There are plenty of interesting things in this great oriental market and one of them are all varieties of great jadeite
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| Imperial Jade Rings |
jewelry.
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| White gold rings |
The sheer volume of items on display are overwhelming, there is no other market on earth with such a lot of jade jewelry stores and different items.
On a place like this one get aware what all is made out of the green stone, today it is different to the last two thousand years before.
Before household items,
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| Black jade pendant |
and weapons such daggers and knives were made from, also Chinese burial decoration, today its jewelry and sculptures of all kind. Now we visit this shopping center at Yangon’s “high street” right in the center and get mesmerized by all this beautiful and sometimes quite exotic items in all possible colors, shapes and forms. Colors are from white to lavender, pink, yellow, green, brown all the way to black which is rather seldom.
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| White Jade Statue |
The shelves are full with real artwork, not all the time, but often, there are jadeite pendants, rings, necklaces, earrings, bangles and other jewelry. Expensive items are a Jade Buddha in various forms and sizes, Hindu gods statues carved from a solid jade block come in different colors, white is common, lavender and green jade are more expensive so are various statues which got encrusted with ruby and gold dust, this is real stuff, no imitation.
the answer is simple, look for the color, saturated emerald green is best, check the translucency, the more transparent the stone is the better the quality and the higher the price, take 10x magnifying lens with to see cracks or other things, it is common to hide this impurities by injecting resin etc. but the resin only holds for around two years after the stone deteriorates and the item is worthless and look for the texture, is it fine or coarse.
To bring it to the point, if you intend to buy a jadeite item up to around $ 300,- your careful check will probably be enough. Over this amount you need to take a consultant with you who can be hired on a hourly base. Because there are so many tricks to make great looking items out of low quality one and this will only become visible after around 2 to 3 years. Chinese are very creative to pull you virtually over the table.
This is not so relevant in Myanmar or Burma because the authorities acts real harsh to crooks and that makes them afraid but in countries like China, Thailand, Singapore etc. nobody really cares when you get cheated. The thing a casual buyer should understand, this guys have more than 2000 years experience to manipulate this green stones, they know what they do.
This quality Singapore jade jewelry shop has great items and is trustworthy, they are located in the mall of the Sands Casino at Marina Bay, the name is Lavalier.
.jpg "imperial jade jewelry with diamonds")
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