In memory of our good friend David Hargett who passed away a few years ago in New York, the city he called his home for the most of his adult life.
David worked for the Gemological Institute of America in New York for 16 years. He obtained his his Graduate Gemologist diploma in Santa Monica, California and a bachelor´s degree from New York University. He is recognized for developing many of the techniques still used today to recognize synthetic and treated colored stones, as well as cultured pearls and enhanced diamonds.
Through his dedicated gemological research and an overall strong work ethic, he gained the respect and admiration of gemologist all over the world.
Monday, February 7, 2011
Sunday, January 23, 2011
Jades, S.A. has been welcoming visitors to its factory and show rooms since it opened its doors in 1974. This is the year archaeologist, Mary Lou Johnson, rediscovered the lost Jade quarries of the Maya in the Motagua Valley, Zacapa, Guatemala and began the Jade industry again after 500 years of dormancy.
What is Jade?
It is a generic term used in mineralogy to describe two different stones “Jadeite” (Sodium-Aluminum-Silicate) and “Nephrite” (Calcium-Magnesium-Iron Silicate) The first one is the hardest and densest with more brilliant colors and variety, it is found in 6 places worldwide : Burma (Myanmar) and Guatemala are the largest producers. Nephrite is found in 16 places; is waxy to the touch; has a fibrous structure and it is used primarily for carving. Canada is the largest producer of nephrite in the world.
What is the origin of the term Jade? Formerly the Aztecs called it Chalchihuitl” and the Mayas called it “Yax Tun” (green stone). When the Spaniards arrived in Mesoamerica they noticed that the natives rubbed a green stone on the abdomen to cure kidney and liver ailments. They called the stone “Pierre de yjade” (Lapiz Nefriticus). An error in French printing gave us the term jade because instead of writing “Pierre d’ ejade” they wrote “Pierre de Jade”. Later, a French scientist Alexis Damour (1863) determined that Chinese Jade was chemically different from Burmese jade and coined the term “Jadeite” for the Burmese jade and “Nephrite” for the Chinese variety.. When the first jade stones were found in Guatemala (1953). It was noted that they were jadeite-jade variety.
Jade Color Properties
COLOR PROPERTIES
WHITE JADE
Purity and healing. Tones and strengthens body and mind. Imparts a sense of strength and courage. Works with chakras and attitudes. Reduces stress. Relaxing, peace of mind.
JADE BLANCO
La pureza y la curación. Tonifica y fortalece el cuerpo y la mente. Proporciona una sensación de fuerza y coraje. Trabaja con los chakras y las actitudes. Reduce el estrés. Relajante, la paz de la mente.
GREEN JADE
Fertility, good fortune and prosperity. Strengthens heart, kidneys, immune system. Helps cleanse blood increases longevity and fertility. Aids eye disorders and female problems. Powerful emotional balancer. Radiates divine, unconditional love. Clarity, modesty, courage, justice, wisdom. Peaceful and nurturing. Dispels negativity. Healing affinity will correspond to particular color of stone.
JADE VERDE
La fertilidad, la buena fortuna y prosperidad. Fortalece el corazón, los riñones, el sistema inmunológico. Ayuda a limpiar la sangre aumenta la longevidad y fecundidad. Ayudas para los trastornos oculares y problemas femeninos. Equilibrador emocional de gran alcance. Irradia belleza, el amor incondicional. Claridad, modestia, valentía, justicia, sabiduría. Pacífica y la crianza. Disipa la negatividad. Afinidad a la curación correspondra ha determinado color del jade verde.
BLACK JADE
Power and protection. Stimulates muscle tissue. Strengthens blood. Emotional tranquility, positive attitudes towards life. Brings one into alignment with their center. Independence. Health, wellbeing. Chakra(s) heart.
JADE NEGRO
Poder y protección. Estimula el tejido muscular. Fortalece la sangre. Tranquilidad emocional, las actitudes positivas hacia la vida. Le lleva a la alineación con el centro de su cuerpo. Independencia. Salud, bienestar. Chakra (s) de corazón.
LILAC JADE
Love, serenity and joy. Strengthens immune system. Enhances right brain activity. Powerful blood cleanser and energizer. Helps mental disorders. Purification and regeneration on all levels of consciousness. Excellent for meditation. Calming, strong protective qualities. Healing, divine love, inspiration, intuition.
JADE LILA
El amor, la serenidad y la alegría. Fortalece el sistema inmunológico. Aumenta la actividad cerebral derecho. Limpiador de sangre y energizante. Ayudas a eliminar trastornos mentales. Purificación y regeneración en todos los niveles de conciencia. Excelente para la meditación. Calmante, fuerte cualidad de protección. La curación, amor divino, inspiración, intuición.
OLMEC JADE
Self mastery, strength and balance. Alleviates fears, guilt, and tension. Helps clear subconscious imbalances. Creative expression, communication, joy, emotional balance.
JADEOLMECA
Dominio de sí mismo, fuerza y equilibrio. Alivia el temor, la culpa y la tensión. Ayuda aclarar los desequilibrios del subconsciente. Expresión creativa, comunicación, alegría, equilibrio emocional.
GALACTIC JADE
Magic, mysticism and divinity. Enhances body{s healing energy. Diminishes self-destructive tendencies. Raises self-esteem. Powerful alignment with Higher Self. Lightheartedness, cheerfulness, hope, energizing, attracts abundance.
JADE GALACTICO
Magia, misticismo y divinidad. Aumenta la energía curativa del cuerpo. Disminuye las tendencias autodestructivas. Aumenta la autoestima. Alineación de gran alcance con el Yo Superior. Desenfado, alegría, esperanza, energizante, atrae la abundancia.
DOLPHIN JADE
Energizing and awakening. Calm nerves, reduces fluid retention. Strengthens kidneys, liver. Purifies the body. Physical/emotional/mental balancer. Helps banish fears and phobias. Inspiration, peace, calmness and love.
JADE DELFIN
Energizante y despertar. Calma los nervios, reduce la retención de líquidos. Fortalece los riñones, el hígado. Purifica el cuerpo. Física / emocional / equilibrador mental. Ayuda a desterrar los miedos y fobias. Inspiración, paz, tranquilidad y amor.
MINT JADE
Peace and wisdom. Strengthens heart, circulatory system. Aids sleep. Vitalizing for body. Reveals subconscious blocks. Excellent balancer on all levels.
JADE COLOR MENTA
Paz y sabiduría. Fortalece el corazón, sistema circulatorio. Ayuda a dormir. Vitalizante para el cuerpo. Revela bloques subconsciente. Equilibrador excelente en todos los niveles.
Friday, January 14, 2011
Annual "Vegas in Antigua" Fundraiser
The annual "Vegas in Antigua" Fundraiser will be feld on January 29, 2011. The purpose for this fundraiser is to raiser funds for local Guatemalan NGO like the;
Saturday, January 29 2pm-10pm at Casa Convento Concepcion, La Calle Concepcion house number 41, Antigua
Entry fee Q100- Vegas Bucks Q50
Food! Drinks! Belly Dancing! Raffles! Prizes....and more!
- Animal Aware
- As Green As It Gets
- Cultural Survival
- Esperanza Juvenil
- Fotokids
- Niños de Guatemala
- Nuestros Ahijados
- Open Windows
- Riecken-Guatemala
- Starfish One-By-One
Saturday, January 29 2pm-10pm at Casa Convento Concepcion, La Calle Concepcion house number 41, Antigua
Entry fee Q100- Vegas Bucks Q50
Food! Drinks! Belly Dancing! Raffles! Prizes....and more!
Wednesday, November 5, 2008
The State of the Jade
How Guatemala's Jade Was Rediscovered
In April 2007 Mary Lou Ridinger was invited to speak at the Sinkankas Symposium, a conference co-sponsored by the Gemological Institute of America.
To celebrate its 5th year, the Symposium chose to explore the power of Jade, and so Mary Lou was an obvious pick to headline the list of speakers at the event.
Other speakers included Fred Ward, National Geographic author and photographer; author Si Frazier; Don Kay of Mason Kay Importers; John Koivula, GIA gemstone inclusion expert; Richard Hughes, author and gem authority; and George Rossman, professor and mineralogist at California Institute of Technology.
Reprinted here is the speech that Mary Lou Ridinger presented at the Symposium. It is sure to further your understanding of the history of Mary Lou's discoveries, and of Jades, S.A.
April 21, 2007
The State of the Jade
"Jade: A treasure from the past, an asset for your future. That's the advertising slogan of our company, Jades S.A.
But where does the word 'jade' come from? 'Yu' is the Chinese word for jade; the Aztec word for jade is 'chalchihuitl'; the Maya word for jade was 'yax tun'. But the word for jade comes from 'piedra de hijada,' Spanish for 'stone of the loins.'
At the time of the Spanish conquest, Europeans were unfamiliar with jade. Consequently, when the Spaniards brought jade from the Americas, their term, 'piedra de hijada' became 'pierre d'ejade' in french, 'jade' in German, 'giadda' in Italian, and 'jade' in English.
Jade was the most important cultural item of the civilizations of Mesoamerica for three thousand years, from 1500 BC to 1500 AD. There were seven different civilizations that worshipped jade, beginning with the Olmecs and ending with the Aztecs. During the Maya civilization, there were cities of 50,000 people, with skyscrapers seven storeys high.
The mystery for archaeologists like myself during much of the 20th century was this: where were the jade sources located?
That mystery was partially solved when William Foshag, the curator of geology for the Smithsonian, spent twenty years of his life looking for jade sources throughout Mexico and Central America. His work, "Mineralogical Studies on Guatemala Jade", was published in 1957.
This was the road-map for subsequent exploration showing the position of the Motagua Fault between the North American tectonic plate and the Caribbean tectonic plate. He also did meticulous analysis showing the similarities between Burmese material and Guatemalan material -- X-ray diffraction patterns, refractive indices, etc. And so, this publication became our bible.
When we found our first outcropping of jade on a tributary of the Motagua River in 1974, we sent our stone samples to the G.I.A. (Gemological Institute of America) for X-ray diffraction and identification. We also sent samples to Kennecott Exploration, Inc. Petrarch Associates, Western Petrographic, Metallurgical Laboratories, Inc. and the University of Miami.
Once we were convinced that we had jadeite jade, we came up with a mission statement for the founding of our fledgling business. We wanted to set up a factory and carve the jade by training descendants of the Maya to recreate the treasures that had been of supreme importance to their ancestors for three thousand years.
We would ask museums and governments around the world who had collections of pre-Colombian jade to authorize or licence reproductions. We would never buy or sell pre-Colombian jade, and our reproductions would give customers the 'green option' -- to buy a piece of recently carved jade marked with our company trademark (a triangle) and provide impetus to a newly formed industry in Guatemala, thereby preventing the 'national patrimony' from being looted from tombs and stolen from museums to satisfy the greed of private collectors.
We also planned to create products completely original and different from jade products being produced in Asia.
We also planned on never selling any jade that we could not back up with a one hundred percent guarantee that it is true jadeite jade from Guatemala. We decided never to dye, bleach, heat treat, or use anything to change the natural color of the stone.
This was amazingly ambitious and idealistic and probably foolhardy of us; to start a new industry in a country that didn't believe that their stone was jade, to train workers who never knew their ancestors worshipped jade, and to create products to sell to tourists who had never heard of jade from Guatemala. So, for fourteen years we had to continuously write, speak, lecture, educate and enlighten and entire country and its hundreds of thousands of yearly visitors.
Now, over one hundred articles have been written about us worldwide. We have been featured in National Geographic Magazine and on the Discovery Channel, and one of the finest articles was written in the summer 1990 issue of Gems and Gemology entitled, 'Jadeite of Guatemala: A Contemporary View' by Dave Hargett.
There have been several twists and turns along our highway, but one of the most rewarding was our involvement with the 'Mesoamerican Jade Project' from its inception in 1977 until its results, which were shared with us in 1980.
The project was funded through the Boston Museum of Fine Arts with the Materials Conservation Laboratory of the Smithsonian and with Brookhaven National Library. The project set out to seek a method for finger-printing jades from mine sources and jade archaeological artifacts from museums by using neutron activation analysis to compare rare trace elements using isotopes given off after radiation.
The results showed that material from our only jade quarry in the 1970s -- let's call it Quarry #1 -- matched up with only one of six groups which were found by the project. We had a new mission: find five more jade sources.
We went back to major investment in exploration. Our team found Quarry #2 in 1987, Quarry #3 in 1998, Quarry #4 in 2000, Quarry #5 in 2002, Quarry #6 in 2003, and Quarry #7 in 2004.
Quarry #2 gave us a new jade with metal inclusions which we dubbed 'Galactic Jade'. The G.I.A. assay reported jadeite jade.
It turns out that Quarry #3 was a lucky strike extra, because there were no museum artifacts associated with it. This is our source of 'Rainbow Jade' and 'Lilac Jade'. We sent samples to the G.I.A. for assay and later sent the same material to the Hong Kong Gemological Laboratory.
So we had a new material for the world and we have since sold several million dollars worth of this material through our own stores in Mexico, Guatemala, Belize, El Salvador and Honduras. And during the last thirty-three years we have created a market for black jade and sold millions of dollars of black jade.
In 2004, we discovered truly translucent emerald green jade which we call 'Maya Imperial Jade'. We still have only small amounts, but the material is there and we are selling it steadily.
A major obstacle we have faced over the years is the lack of appraisers who are qualified to appraise jade. We gave the G.I.A. a sample set of study jades from Quarry #1 in 1978. We have hoped that the G.I.A. would include more material on jade in their coursework. The G.I.A. used an image of one of our reproduction jade masks to attract students to their courses but they are not turning out appraisers who are qualified to appraise jade.
We worked very closely with Anna Miller's Master Valuer program from 2000 until her death in 2003. She held a workshop in Guatemala in 2002 which produced nine qualified jade appraisers. We have a list of these Master Valuer graduates for anyone interested. We also have a current price list for our stone.
We are now having our assay work done by Hong Kong Gems Laboratory because the G.I.A. lab no longer does X-ray diffraction on jade samples, and will no longer give a designation of 'jadeite jade' on an analysis. The G.I.A. lab now only identifies our jade as 'pyroxene'. Jadeite is one of many pyroxenes, so it is not a conclusion that we are satisfied with. We hope this can change.
In conclusion, we are a young industry in Guatemala. Many of our ex-employees have set up their own businesses, but we are still the giant, we are the only example in the jade world of a thoroughly vertically integrated operation. We have five mining licences from the Guatemalan government, we operate seven quarries, we do ongoing exploration, we transport, cut and process all of our own stone, we have seven jewelers, twenty-five factory workers, two designers and eight assemblers. We do all of our own manufacturing and we wholesale and retail all of our own products ourselves.
We have not strayed far from our mission statement and the surest evidence of our success was an accidental meeting which occurred when the Discovery Channel was filming a special entitled, 'The Mysteries of Jade' in Belize in 1999.
I was sitting on the sidelines while they were setting up a shot of tomb looting and, ever the anthropologist, I struck up a conversation with a local, who it turned out was one of the biggest traffickers of pre-Colombian artifacts in Belize. He had no idea who I was and I had no idea who he was. As our conversation progressed and his account of his activities grew more fascinating, I finally asked him, 'Do you have a lot of customers for jade?'
He responded sadly that he, 'used to do a lot of business with jade and got great prices,' but that 'some company in Guatemala was producing so many replicas that collectors had become discouraged and the bottom had dropped out of the market.'
I could have stood up and cheered. Our goal had been reached! What better evidence of success."
In April 2007 Mary Lou Ridinger was invited to speak at the Sinkankas Symposium, a conference co-sponsored by the Gemological Institute of America.To celebrate its 5th year, the Symposium chose to explore the power of Jade, and so Mary Lou was an obvious pick to headline the list of speakers at the event.
Other speakers included Fred Ward, National Geographic author and photographer; author Si Frazier; Don Kay of Mason Kay Importers; John Koivula, GIA gemstone inclusion expert; Richard Hughes, author and gem authority; and George Rossman, professor and mineralogist at California Institute of Technology.
Reprinted here is the speech that Mary Lou Ridinger presented at the Symposium. It is sure to further your understanding of the history of Mary Lou's discoveries, and of Jades, S.A.
April 21, 2007
The State of the Jade
"Jade: A treasure from the past, an asset for your future. That's the advertising slogan of our company, Jades S.A.
But where does the word 'jade' come from? 'Yu' is the Chinese word for jade; the Aztec word for jade is 'chalchihuitl'; the Maya word for jade was 'yax tun'. But the word for jade comes from 'piedra de hijada,' Spanish for 'stone of the loins.'
At the time of the Spanish conquest, Europeans were unfamiliar with jade. Consequently, when the Spaniards brought jade from the Americas, their term, 'piedra de hijada' became 'pierre d'ejade' in french, 'jade' in German, 'giadda' in Italian, and 'jade' in English.
Jade was the most important cultural item of the civilizations of Mesoamerica for three thousand years, from 1500 BC to 1500 AD. There were seven different civilizations that worshipped jade, beginning with the Olmecs and ending with the Aztecs. During the Maya civilization, there were cities of 50,000 people, with skyscrapers seven storeys high.
The mystery for archaeologists like myself during much of the 20th century was this: where were the jade sources located?
That mystery was partially solved when William Foshag, the curator of geology for the Smithsonian, spent twenty years of his life looking for jade sources throughout Mexico and Central America. His work, "Mineralogical Studies on Guatemala Jade", was published in 1957.
This was the road-map for subsequent exploration showing the position of the Motagua Fault between the North American tectonic plate and the Caribbean tectonic plate. He also did meticulous analysis showing the similarities between Burmese material and Guatemalan material -- X-ray diffraction patterns, refractive indices, etc. And so, this publication became our bible.
When we found our first outcropping of jade on a tributary of the Motagua River in 1974, we sent our stone samples to the G.I.A. (Gemological Institute of America) for X-ray diffraction and identification. We also sent samples to Kennecott Exploration, Inc. Petrarch Associates, Western Petrographic, Metallurgical Laboratories, Inc. and the University of Miami.
Once we were convinced that we had jadeite jade, we came up with a mission statement for the founding of our fledgling business. We wanted to set up a factory and carve the jade by training descendants of the Maya to recreate the treasures that had been of supreme importance to their ancestors for three thousand years.
We would ask museums and governments around the world who had collections of pre-Colombian jade to authorize or licence reproductions. We would never buy or sell pre-Colombian jade, and our reproductions would give customers the 'green option' -- to buy a piece of recently carved jade marked with our company trademark (a triangle) and provide impetus to a newly formed industry in Guatemala, thereby preventing the 'national patrimony' from being looted from tombs and stolen from museums to satisfy the greed of private collectors.
We also planned to create products completely original and different from jade products being produced in Asia.
We also planned on never selling any jade that we could not back up with a one hundred percent guarantee that it is true jadeite jade from Guatemala. We decided never to dye, bleach, heat treat, or use anything to change the natural color of the stone.
This was amazingly ambitious and idealistic and probably foolhardy of us; to start a new industry in a country that didn't believe that their stone was jade, to train workers who never knew their ancestors worshipped jade, and to create products to sell to tourists who had never heard of jade from Guatemala. So, for fourteen years we had to continuously write, speak, lecture, educate and enlighten and entire country and its hundreds of thousands of yearly visitors.
Now, over one hundred articles have been written about us worldwide. We have been featured in National Geographic Magazine and on the Discovery Channel, and one of the finest articles was written in the summer 1990 issue of Gems and Gemology entitled, 'Jadeite of Guatemala: A Contemporary View' by Dave Hargett.
There have been several twists and turns along our highway, but one of the most rewarding was our involvement with the 'Mesoamerican Jade Project' from its inception in 1977 until its results, which were shared with us in 1980.
The project was funded through the Boston Museum of Fine Arts with the Materials Conservation Laboratory of the Smithsonian and with Brookhaven National Library. The project set out to seek a method for finger-printing jades from mine sources and jade archaeological artifacts from museums by using neutron activation analysis to compare rare trace elements using isotopes given off after radiation.
The results showed that material from our only jade quarry in the 1970s -- let's call it Quarry #1 -- matched up with only one of six groups which were found by the project. We had a new mission: find five more jade sources.
We went back to major investment in exploration. Our team found Quarry #2 in 1987, Quarry #3 in 1998, Quarry #4 in 2000, Quarry #5 in 2002, Quarry #6 in 2003, and Quarry #7 in 2004.
Quarry #2 gave us a new jade with metal inclusions which we dubbed 'Galactic Jade'. The G.I.A. assay reported jadeite jade.
It turns out that Quarry #3 was a lucky strike extra, because there were no museum artifacts associated with it. This is our source of 'Rainbow Jade' and 'Lilac Jade'. We sent samples to the G.I.A. for assay and later sent the same material to the Hong Kong Gemological Laboratory.
So we had a new material for the world and we have since sold several million dollars worth of this material through our own stores in Mexico, Guatemala, Belize, El Salvador and Honduras. And during the last thirty-three years we have created a market for black jade and sold millions of dollars of black jade.
In 2004, we discovered truly translucent emerald green jade which we call 'Maya Imperial Jade'. We still have only small amounts, but the material is there and we are selling it steadily.
A major obstacle we have faced over the years is the lack of appraisers who are qualified to appraise jade. We gave the G.I.A. a sample set of study jades from Quarry #1 in 1978. We have hoped that the G.I.A. would include more material on jade in their coursework. The G.I.A. used an image of one of our reproduction jade masks to attract students to their courses but they are not turning out appraisers who are qualified to appraise jade.
We worked very closely with Anna Miller's Master Valuer program from 2000 until her death in 2003. She held a workshop in Guatemala in 2002 which produced nine qualified jade appraisers. We have a list of these Master Valuer graduates for anyone interested. We also have a current price list for our stone.
We are now having our assay work done by Hong Kong Gems Laboratory because the G.I.A. lab no longer does X-ray diffraction on jade samples, and will no longer give a designation of 'jadeite jade' on an analysis. The G.I.A. lab now only identifies our jade as 'pyroxene'. Jadeite is one of many pyroxenes, so it is not a conclusion that we are satisfied with. We hope this can change.
In conclusion, we are a young industry in Guatemala. Many of our ex-employees have set up their own businesses, but we are still the giant, we are the only example in the jade world of a thoroughly vertically integrated operation. We have five mining licences from the Guatemalan government, we operate seven quarries, we do ongoing exploration, we transport, cut and process all of our own stone, we have seven jewelers, twenty-five factory workers, two designers and eight assemblers. We do all of our own manufacturing and we wholesale and retail all of our own products ourselves.
We have not strayed far from our mission statement and the surest evidence of our success was an accidental meeting which occurred when the Discovery Channel was filming a special entitled, 'The Mysteries of Jade' in Belize in 1999.
I was sitting on the sidelines while they were setting up a shot of tomb looting and, ever the anthropologist, I struck up a conversation with a local, who it turned out was one of the biggest traffickers of pre-Colombian artifacts in Belize. He had no idea who I was and I had no idea who he was. As our conversation progressed and his account of his activities grew more fascinating, I finally asked him, 'Do you have a lot of customers for jade?'
He responded sadly that he, 'used to do a lot of business with jade and got great prices,' but that 'some company in Guatemala was producing so many replicas that collectors had become discouraged and the bottom had dropped out of the market.'
I could have stood up and cheered. Our goal had been reached! What better evidence of success."
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