Since I first started Lapidary I have always had an affinity to Jade. Early on I collected any piece that caught my eye and being as picky as I am it took quite some time to have much of a collection and all that was in the collection was nephrite.

Prior to my first trip to China my expertise in Jade was very limited and one of the things I promised myself, I would learn all I could about Jade (JADEITE) and the different grades as often as possible while I traveled the country. As I had the opportunity to spend a total of nine months in the PRC and about a month and a half in Hong Kong over a two year period whenever time allowed I'd shop Jade. The majority of what I saw that I liked I could not afford.

During this time I managed to attend two Sotheby Jade auctions in Hong Kong 1987 and 1988. Having the chance to go to previews of these auctions in the Jade lovers capital of the world and actually having the pieces in my hands for close inspection allowed me to have a much better understanding of the subtle differences that take Jadeite to its highest level. At one of the auctions a strand of 89 beads sold for over one million US dollars. Being the bead maker that I am when I saw this it began a quest to find Jadeite any Jadeite, I'd find a piece here and there and bought what I could.

In 2005 I became aware of a collection of Jadeite that had been purchased from an estate I contacted the person that had the Jadeite to no avail as I did not have the time to travel to its location. The person that had the Jadeite had met me only once they were not interested in shipping it to me on approval. Time passed and this person was talking to a friend of mine Jim Rose at Quartzite, he asked Jim if he knew anyone that might be interested in the Jadeite, Jims immediate response Danny Lopacki.

Over the next few weeks and some hassles I managed to purchase the entire lot from this gentleman. When the Jade arrived I instantly knew that this material had been here in the U.S. for quite some time, all of the stone had surface staining from being cut with oil and then sitting for years and years. At first just to satisfy my curiosity I cleaned the face of some of the smaller pieces with one of my file flats, low and behold underneath all of the crud .............. Very nice to excellent Jadeite.

All of the pieces of Jadeite below are from the collection that I purchased. I have done my best to clean the faces of each piece on a 16 inch flat lap,some pieces being not so smooth on the face still show some spoty age/oil staining. If you see a piece you like and would like to see more images, email me and I'll send you larger image files than are on the site.