Bead Dictionary Letter J

Introduction

In the late 1990s, Penny Diamanti, Joyce Diamanti and Robert K. Liu started working on a Bead Dictionary. Around 2009, after much work by the Diamantis, the Bead Dictionary was posted on the Beadazzled website. Through the years, additions were made by Beadazzled. In the summer of 2018, when the Washington DC Beadazzled store and its website closed, the Bead Dictionary was offered to Ornament. This is a unique resource, especially rich for information on beads of ethnographic and ancient origins. As Ornament has only a staff of three, we are slowly reposting it on our website, updating or expanding some of the entries and are adding search features, links and references as time permits. The Bead Dictionary covers primarily beads and other perforated ornaments, but also tools and materials used by those who make jewelry utilizing beads. Photographs from the Ornament archives are being added, as well as new images taken expressly for the Bead Dictionary and others are being brought up to current standards, as many of these images are almost 30 years old. Original photography was by Robert K. Liu, while Cas Webber did additional photos for Beadazzled, noted in the captions as RKL or CW, after first captions.

This Dictionary of Beads is a labor of love and a work in progress. We welcome your comments and suggestions through the Contact link. To navigate, select from the visual index above to jump to the letter you want in the Dictionary, but give the page a little time to load first. To get back to the top and select another letter use the arrow button. We are continuously adding to the Dictionary, so check back often. 

To search for keywords in Dictionary headings, use your browser's search function; for example in Internet Explorer use Control+F and in Apple Command+F, then type in your keyword. We hope you enjoy this (not-so-tiny) treasure, and learn more about the vast world of Beads.

Jade

Jade is derived from the Spanish piedra de ijada, meaning “hip” stone. The term dates from the Spanish conquest in Central and South America, when the invaders believed that amulets made from the green stones so esteemed by the native peoples could cure and protect against kidney diseases. This popular name is widely used to refer to nephrite as well as jadeite. Both of these stones are hard and fine-grained—and are difficult to distinguish. Only in 1863 was it scientifically determined that they are actually two different minerals. Nephrite is fibrous in structure, whereas jadeite is made up of interlocking granular crystals. Both stones are so tough they cannot be “carved,” strictly speaking, but must be cut by abrasion; in ancient times they were ground with quartz sand as the abrasive, but today carborundum or diamond dust is used.

Nephrite from China’s western border area has been worked into ornaments, implements, and ritual objects by the Chinese for thousands of years. It has a greasy luster and, for the most part, ranges in color from dark green to creamy white and has a greasy luster, but nephrite also occurs in yellowish, reddish, or brownish tones. It may be uniform in color, or blotchy, streaky, or banded.

Although revered since prehistoric times, in the late 18th century nephrite was superseded in popularity in China by jadeite from Burma. Today Chinese nephrite is still used for beads and inexpensive ornaments, but sources have become depleted, and Burmese jade is costly. So to fill a burgeoning worldwide demand for jade jewelry and decorative objects, the Chinese gemstone industry turned elsewhere for raw material, most notably to Canada for nephrite that is mined in British Columbia. This and other North American sources were exploited by early Native Americans (especially the Salish and the Inuit) to make tools, weapons, and, ornaments.

Nephrite found in New Zealand has been worked into weapons and ornaments by the Maori since about ad 1000. Their interest in carving waned, however, as they adopted Western culture at the end of the 19th century. German stone-cutters in Idar-Oberstein seized this opportunity to import New Zealand nephrite and carve it in Maori designs, such as tiki, which are small images of the primordial Maori ancestor that were traditionally worn round the neck as a talisman. Between 1896 and 1914 German entrepreneurs shipped more than a million nephrite tiki pendants back to New Zealand for sale as local souvenirs. In today’s global village, traditional Maori designs are being carved from Canadian jade by Chinese craftsmen, while stunning contemporary designs are being crafted in New Zealand by native and non-native artists from both local and imported jade. Other commercial deposits of nephrite are mined in Australia and Central Asia.

Jadeite from Burma is the most highly prized jade today, by both Chinese and Western collectors. It occurs in a wide range of colors: green, yellow, white, blue, lavender, pink, orange, red, brown, and black. Jadeite has a more vitreous, or glassy, luster than nephrite. The most expensive variety, known as “imperial jade,” is a rich, translucent emerald green.

The green stone that was so highly valued by the native peoples of Mesoamerica, and subsequently by the Spanish conquistadores, was mostly a form of jadeite found mainly in Guatemala, with less important deposits in Mexico and California. It ranges from dark green, bluish-green, and black to variegated light gray-green and white. Thanks to gemological advances, we now know that some of those pre-Columbian “jade” artifacts are not jade at all, neither jadeite nor nephrite. They were exquisitely crafted from a variety of virtually anonymous green stones, dubbed “social jade” by archaeologists, because they were just as prized as the real thing. Value as well as beauty is often in the eye of the beholder.

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See Also: Jade Simulants

Jade Simulants

Jade—Pre-Columbian Greenstone Or Cultural Jade

In the pre-Columbian cultures of north and central America, jade beads were as important as they were in China. In both cultures, there were many jade substitutes or cultural jades; in the pre-Columbian Americas, such social or cultural jades were as acceptable as the real jadeite beads (there was no nephrite jade used). These substitutes included albite/albitite, bowenite/serpentine and steatite, as well as others. The most common stone used as a jade substitute was metadiorite, usually a mottled, large-grained greenish granitic rock. Sometimes the beads were large , but rarely matched the dimensions seen on necklaces modeled on Mayan clay effigies from the burial island of Jaina. The beads shown range from 1.1 to 2.8 cm diameters; some may be of real jadeite. Metadiorite perforated ornaments were most common in Guerrero, Mexico. Besides beads, earflares were also made of metadiorite, sometimes mistaken or used as beads in contemporary contexts.

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See Also: Jade

Jadeite

Information to come...

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See Also: Jade

Japanese Beads

Information to come...

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See Also: Asao, Kyoyu

Jasper

Jatim Beads

Jatim beads come from far eastern Java, Indonesia. Dating for Jatim beads remains difficult because of the lack of examples from various excavation sites. They appear in sites ranging from Egypt to Japan which suggests limited trade use during the first millennium.

Jatim beads came on the market in the mid-1980’s. The four main designs for jatim beads are eye beads, mosaic beads and rainbow beads.

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Jatim Replicas

Constructed with a unique technique, ancient Jatim mosaic beads are hot-pinched or segmented. Unlike other mosaic beads, in which the mosaic patterns reach the perforation, Jatim beads only have a thin layer of mosaic glass. They may date from 600 to 700 AD but confirming research is still being undertaken. Probably from East Java, reproductions have been made almost from the time such beads reached Eastern and Western collectors. In a very short period of time, the imitations have gotten so good it is often difficult to differentiate between them and the prototypes. Both the actual ancient beads and their contemporary imitations may be made in Jember.

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Jet

Jump Rings