The design inside the stone

The skill that sets a master carver apart from the ordinary craftsman is the ability to see the design within the jade itself. The artists in China who can use the rind, the flaws, the cracks and the different shades of colour in the stone to bring out something of beauty are very skilled. This art form reaches its peak with pebbles of the fabled Hetian jade dredged from the White and Black Jade Rivers in Xinjiang in northwest China. The two photos here are a very straightforward example of how this works. Most people can see a bird in the stone.

There is a well known story in jade circles about the emperor who was presented with a beautiful boulder of white jade. He immediately summoned the master of his jade workshop and ordered him to carve it into two flying geese. A year later the emperor summoned the craftsman and asked him how he was progressing with the carving he’d commissioned. The craftsman told him it wasn’t ready yet. Another year went by, and the emperor summoned the craftsman once again, only to be told the same thing. A year later it still wasn’t ready. The emperor lost patience and demanded to see what progress the craftsman had made. Quaking with fear the carver told the emperor he hadn’t begun carving yet. Furious, the emperor demanded an explanation, only to be told ‘forgive me great lord, I don’t see two flying geese in this stone, I see a crane perched on a tree’. The emperor examined the jade again and, after a short examination of the flaws and rind in the stone, came to the same conclusion. The craftsman was allowed to keep his head. He carved a crane perched on a tree and the emperor showered him with gifts. Learn more of the legends and myths that surround the stone of heaven in my book, A Jade Treasury. Available on Amazon as a paperback or eBook.