Jade and ivory carving, as one of the traditional Chinese handicrafts, has a history of nearly 3,000 to 4,000 years. Some of the raw materials used in Jade carving are found in China, such as white jade in Xinjiang, agate in Heilongjiang, soapstone in Liaoning, Dushan jade in Central China which the mine is now closed to all but 1 factory that is operated by the China government, and some jade is imported from Canada, rose quartz from Brazil, coral from Japan and ivory from Tanzania and some very beautiful Jade from Myanmar and even Malaysia.

Pictured above, several of the 7 possible colors from Dushan mountain jade.

Pearl S. Buck, writing in her autobiography "My Several Worlds", gives a vivid description of the shops of jade carvers in Canton: "There are jade of every color, she writes: "yellow, or rust-red, blue, or green as spring rice, mottled as marble, or smooth and cold and white as mutton fat, every variety exquisite and put to exquisite use". In the esteem of the Chinese, jade outranks all other gemstones, including diamonds, emeralds, rubies, sapphires, and pearls, "because jade is the most sumptuous jewel against a woman's flesh.".

These materials are made into exquisite art pieces, including legendary figures, vases and incense burners, flowers, birds, animals and hollowed-out engravings.
The chemical composition of jade stones falls into three categories, namely quartz, silicate and phosphate.

In carving jade vases and incense burners, the artisans attract people's attention with their distinctive styles.
The late veteran carver Sun Tianyi, who was renowned for his jade vases and incense burners, had practiced jade carving for almost 50 years before he passed away at the age of 86. He was skilled at designing vases and incenses burners modeled on antique bronzes. He was especially good at designing animal patterns, which he used for decorating vases and incense burners. Therefore, the exquisite designs he made on incense burners are all quaint, elegant, symmetrical and varied in shapes, thus appealing to people with a sense of unsophisticated antique beauty. In 1953, two of his carvings, "Dragon Soaring through the Clouds" (coral) and "The Cowherd and the Girl Weaver" (amber), were displayed at the East China Folk Handicrafts Exhibition and later transferred in the Book "Who's Who of Handicraftsmen in China".

The 86-year-old Zhou Shouhai, also known as "a handicraft artist in the country" has been working very hard to assimilate the strong points of different artisans' styles so that he has become an outstanding carver in the country. His works, such as incense burners with four dragon designs, fumigators, pavilion-shaped incense burners and vases in the shape of flowering crabapples, are all unique in the style and elegant in taste, different from all other styles.

Liu Jisong is known as an "Eccentric Jade Carver in the South", a name that best describes his works. Creativeness features his designing. All on one burner, he carves the images of Buddha, Guan Yin (Goddess of Mercy), legendary figures, monstrous beasts so skillfully that he makes his unique work a fascinating masterpiece and proves himself to have attained perfection in jade carving. One of his best pieces, "Alms Bowl with a Hundred Buddhas" (jadeite) was collected in 1978 by the city hall of Yokohama, Japan as a rarity. Fine pieces designed by Cai Jianshen and Xiao Haichun, two masters of handicrafts in China, have enjoyed such high reputations that they are acclaimed as "Oriental Treasures".

These designers work meticulously. Through unique designing, these jade stones, though ordinary looking, will be skillfully carved into valuable and lovable pieces of art.

Designing is of primary importance. The key to successful designing is to make the best use of the natural qualities of the stone. A designer is in no hurry to design a piece when he gets a stone. First, he has to pick out a piece when he gets a stone. First, he has to pick out flaws in the raw stone after careful examination, and tries to design by making full use of the nature colors of the stone. Then, he does his best to fit the jade stone with his conceived theme. Unlike the designing of a house, the designing of a jade piece has often to be modified several times before it is finally finished because of the peculiar nature of the jade stone. Therefore, if a flaw is found inside the stone when a piece is being carved, the original design has to be changed. On the other hand, if beautiful colors are found inside the stone in the carving process, the piece has to be redesigned to make it more appealing.

Jade designers should be good learners who attach great importance to the absorption of traditional culture and art to enrich their imagination. While carrying forward traditional carving techniques, they are creative in bringing new ideas into their work.

In the photos above, the workers are cutting the raw materials into rough shapes according to the designs. They are using emery cutters turning at a high speed. There is a saying among workers that goes, "Rough shape cutting is the key to the success in the carving of a beautiful piece".
It describes the importance of rough shape cutting that calls for high skill, deliberate care and practiced precision. With great proficiency, the workers, who cut to the turn of a hair, are grinding the inner wall. The requirements are thinness and evenness. The least negligence will result in the penetration of the inner wall, thus causing losses.

In our Dragon Boat Carvings, workers cut jade chains. The chains are neither inlaid nor welded together, but are actually carved out of one piece of jade. First, the whole piece is cut into movable rings. Then the rings are ground till they are smooth and even. In the carving of a jade chain, care is most important, for the slightest negligence would spoil the whole piece. Meanwhile, strong will and physical stamina is also needed.

With such tiny tools the workers are carving out patterns that are as fine and clear as if they were painted with brushes.

In the polishing workshop. Polishing is the final procedure in jade carving.

On our website, Factory Direct Jade Carvings you can see different kinds of jade pieces including carvings of ancient figures.

Now, about the Bone carvings. With a history of about a hundred years and possibly much much longer, Bone carvings of Guangzhou comprise all varieties including human figures carved in the round, intricately hollowed-out open-work and imitations of antiques. Guangzhou is famous for its hollowed-out ivory balls and Beijing for its human figures, then, Shanghai is well known for its past ivory carvings done with intricately hollowed-out open work.
Now as everyone knows we no longer can carve elephant ivory so we opt to carve Treated Water Buffalo or other large animal bones in stead. These bones are very similar to Ivory.

n humanity?s entire recorded history, there has never existed a more intimate relationship between a people and a stone than that between the Chinese and jade. To the people of the Middle Kingdom, jade was not simply hardened earth ?but, instead, crystallized magic ?a tiny piece of heaven bequeathed by the gods to those of us destined to suffer here on earth. It was literally the link between heaven and earth, the bridge that allowed mortals to cross over into immortality.

For people of the Middle Kingdom, the green stone was valued beyond all else. Gold and precious stones might capture interest in the rest of the world, but, in China, they were simply also-rans. In Chinese athletic competitions, ivory was given for third place and gold for second. Jade was reserved solely for the winners, including high officials in the imperial court, because, as the saying went: ?Gold has a price ?but jade is priceless.?p> Within jade?s verdant interior, the Chinese saw all that is good with humanity ?virtue, purity, justice, humanity, and more. But while jade itself might be priceless, many are willing to extract coin for the honor of holding it in one?s hand, or wearing the green stone on a finger or ear. In fact, the search itself has its price.

So what exactly is jade? In the Orient, just about anything translucent and green has been called jade at one time or another. But the Occidental psyche, with its propensity to pigeon-hole, does not sit well with such indifference to definition. Just how does one classify a piece of heaven? If you are Chinese, you don?t even bother trying, which was why it was left for the intruders from the West to finally cross all the t?s and dot the i?s of this most arcane of gem substances.

In 1863, a French mineralogist, Alexis Damour, analyzed the bright green stones from Burma. Finding them different from ordinary Chinese jade (nephrite), he named the 'new' jade, jadeite. Today, gemologists apply the term jade only to nephrite and jadeite. Nephrite is a fibrous subspecies of the actinolite ?tremolite series, while jadeite is a member of the pyroxene mineral group. The ideal composition of jadeite is [NaAl(SiO3)2], but it is frequently mixed with diopside [CaMg(SiO3)2] or acmite [NaFe(SiO3)2]. Jadeite rich in iron (mixed with acmite) is a dark green to black color and is termed chloromelanite. Some boulders display this black, chloromelanite skin, which, according to Burmese miners, is bad, ?infecting?the stone, and a harbinger of bad luck.