How did the "cultural" preference for high color/clarity begin?

[bmfang]

@Wink,

Some jade from my late mother. Have not worn any of the rings, the brooch, or bracelets, but have worn the pendants. I prefer HPD CBI rings instead

This is so similar to the Jade jewellery that i’ve inherited from my aunts and maternal grandmother.

My main nephrite jade piece I often wear is this:

@foxinsox would probably recognise this given she’s from that fair land across the ditch from Australia

The stuff from my aunts and maternal grandmother is far too girly for me to wear (that plus they won’t fit my wrists and fingers!)

 

[foxinsox]

@bmfang the colour in your pounamu is glorious. I'll bet that glows in sunlight

 

[bmfang]

@bmfang the colour in your pounamu is glorious. I'll bet that glows in sunlight

I picked this up in 2014 during the long overdue honeymoon with my wife in Queenstown (3 years after we got married). I’m still trying to work out what specific “type” it is. I know it definitely isn’t inanga, tangiwai or kawakawa. It’s either kahurangi or totoweka.

I’m more inclined to view it as kahurangi given the absence of red flecks in it (something that is present in totoweka pounamu), the intense green colour it has and small white flecks in it (you can see one such fleck on the right side of the tail).

I met the carver of this manaia, Tyson Lynes, the day after we purchased it. He said the pounamu was from the Westland district of the South Island.

I bought my wife a pounamu piece from the same jeweller. Would have been too derivative of me as a guy to have found a toki (an adze) or a hei matau (hook). From memory we spent at least two hours in the shop examining the respective pieces of nephrite in her piece and mine before we bargained for them (Queenstown is after all a tourist town so everything was marked up significantly). Their gallery and workshop upstairs from the shop is utterly beautiful (Waka Gallery).

Naturally, her piece has diamonds in it (the quality of the melee setting in 18kt white gold is quite good and some of the melee has blue fluorescence too!). I think the pounamu in her piece is also kahurangi. With some better lighting...

You can see the translucency of the nephrite in this shot.

I haven’t taken a shot of it in direct sunlight, noted as something to do. NZ pounamu is definitely a different beast colour wise to the jadeite that we Chinese love.

 

[foxinsox]

You know the names of the different types better than I do @bmfang! I love the colour and translucency so much. The non-Māori NZers don’t value pounamu as much as we should I think. I was looking for a bangle a while ago to give as a gift and really struggled to find good pieces. I wasn’t looking in a tourist area so that may have been why but it’s sad that we don’t value our own gemstones as much as visitors to our country do.

 

[bmfang]

@foxinsox
Real Kiwi greenstone is getting harder to find I’ve been told (back then when we bought these pieces and even now). Most of the cheap greenstone in NZ tourist places apparently is from Canada or China. The good stuff (ie real NZ pounamu) costs well over $100 for a small koru or hei matau.

 

[Lorelei]

I picked this up in 2014 during the long overdue honeymoon with my wife in Queenstown (3 years after we got married). I’m still trying to work out what specific “type” it is. I know it definitely isn’t inanga, tangiwai or kawakawa. It’s either kahurangi or totoweka.

I’m more inclined to view it as kahurangi given the absence of red flecks in it (something that is present in totoweka pounamu), the intense green colour it has and small white flecks in it (you can see one such fleck on the right side of the tail).

I met the carver of this manaia, Tyson Lynes, the day after we purchased it. He said the pounamu was from the Westland district of the South Island.

I bought my wife a pounamu piece from the same jeweller. Would have been too derivative of me as a guy to have found a toki (an adze) or a hei matau (hook). From memory we spent at least two hours in the shop examining the respective pieces of nephrite in her piece and mine before we bargained for them (Queenstown is after all a tourist town so everything was marked up significantly). Their gallery and workshop upstairs from the shop is utterly beautiful (Waka Gallery).

Naturally, her piece has diamonds in it (the quality of the melee setting in 18kt white gold is quite good and some of the melee has blue fluorescence too!). I think the pounamu in her piece is also kahurangi. With some better lighting...

You can see the translucency of the nephrite in this shot.

I haven’t taken a shot of it in direct sunlight, noted as something to do. NZ pounamu is definitely a different beast colour wise to the jadeite that we Chinese love.

Stunning pieces, absolutely beautiful.