Natural Green Jade With Gold

[1515Art]

Chris Ralph could no doubt answer in more detail but the short answer is something he said to me recently. The most abundant minerals in the earth's crust are the silicates and so quartz minerals in all their forms are virtually everywhere. Chrysoprase and other chalcedony are just massive or cryptocrystalline forms of silica. Not surprising then that where you find gold you tend to find quartz type minerals but unfortunately the reverse is not true. Very similar to the situation with magnetite, the most common black sand mineral. Since it is found almost everywhere you of course find it associated with gold, but there are countless locations with magnetite black sands where there is absolutely no gold.

 

 

Some cryptocrystalline silcates are occasionally associated with gold when they are mineralized in banded iron formations from my experience. I've (very rarely) found nuggets with dark red jasper inclusions and found layers or pods of it or chert in situ in abandoned gold mines.

 

I've seen chalcedony in layers in areas with gold bearing quartz veins and pockets but I've never found it directly included into (or vice versa) gold itself and it generally looks like it came later to me.

 

But like Steve says, it's everywhere. Associations might be concluded in very specific areas, but to use it as an indicator anywhere would probably test a person's patience. But if you find BIF and jasper or chert together you may want to give the area a closer look.

some of what you are telling me is sounding familiar with what I'm reading, but I'm so new a lot is still over my head. here are some more pictures of the property and a vast area is largely wilderness so its hard to know just what a person would find if he looked around, the oldest temple in the area is also located on this property as are other old structures. 

 

XinMi lies around the top right edge of what is called the Qin Ling Fold Belt on the attached map, thats the main sedimentary rock hosted gold district according to the map legend.

 

Pictures are of the jade mine, some mountain property and one creek area and the tunnel short cut across the property through the mountain and passing a motorcycle inside the tunnel. (a good place to keep cold beer is just inside the jade mine shaft as its icy cold, while the temperature outside was over 100)

[Clay Diggins]

I became familiar with a material very similar to this in the 1970's. It was Chloromelanite amphibole black jade from Stoddard Wells, California. Most of the Chloromelanite from that location was dark green to black although there was some very attractive deep green material too.

 

The darkest of the jade often had magnetite inclusions that made it unsuitable for export to the Asian markets. Some folks figured out that the magnetite could be plated with silver(?) fairly easily. I believe this was an amalgam process but I couldn't tell for sure. Others have told me the included mineral was marcasite (white pyrite) which polished well by itself. I doubt that story because the marcasite I've worked with tended to oxidize dark gray a few weeks after being polished.

 

I've seen similar included material from Wyoming but the magnetite appeared to be more well formed crystals than the "blobby" Stoddard Wells included jades.

 

In the mid 70's my mother had occasion to travel extensively in the gem areas of Thailand and what was then known as Burma. She brought back many nice gem specimens and carvings including a small necklace of material virtually identical to what you show here. She didn't feel the material was natural and said she had been warned away by a friend but bought the piece anyway because she liked it.

 

None of this is definitive of your material but the look and source was so reminiscent I thought I would share what little I know.

[1515Art]

Hi Clay, Thanks for the info, i'll bet your mom had a chance to see a lot of nice jade and gems back in the 70's and prices were a bit different back then.

 

i asked for some of the rough material hopefully my friend will be able to bring some when he comes over around the end of the month. then i can see/show what the rough stuff looks like before being worked. this material doesn't look treated and shows the scratches from very fine sand paper polishing on both the stone and metallic areas, but i'll find out more soon.

 

as far as the concerns your moms friend had about treated material, in China every valuable (desirable) jade, gem, lake rock and everything else is also faked, copied and simulated in one way or another and many of the fakes are really good, so its difficult to know if her concerns were about that piece or all pieces of that type. Knowing the studio this jade came from it is difficult to imagine they would bother to carve any stone not of high quality or treated in some way as to risk their reputation.

[1515Art]

here are two other jade rings the pink stone is Dushan Yu (Yu, means jade in Chinese), Yu can also mean fish or octopus, my wifes Chinese first name is Yu, so the carver made her the octopus ring for her birthday as a gift. the skull ring is nephrite i think.

[El Dorado]

Awesome carvings

[gambler]

thanks for sharing the pics, very interesting stuff.

[1515Art]

Well... it took a little longer than I thought it would to get some of this jade the snake carving was made from and this little chunk of rock had to change hands a bunch of times on it journey from China, but it's finally here.

 

it is a nice piece of dark green Jade from Xinjiang the area in China with the most desirable jade, lots of jade claims to be from Xinjiang but is usually from someplace else. The gold jade as I was told it is called actually contains no gold... I had it XRF tested and exactly as Steve and Reno Chris said (no surprises here, these two know their stuff) this is a form of pyrite that tested 99% iron with trace amounts of silver, palladium and some other elements. 

 

The carving we have from this jade is very stable so far and has not discolored as of yet, perhaps this has to do with the combination of trace elements combined with the iron, more time will tell for sure.

 

That is some top notch material. I would love to make some jewelry with it. If you could ever lead me to a source, I would be indebted. Thanks for sharing.

El Dorado, PM me your mailing address and I will send you this piece of jade to play with, you should be able to get some nice cav's out of this chunk.

clark

[1515Art]

whoops forgot to add the picture to my post...

[Quick]

I have been called a lot of things but never a Reno Chris haha

Root