What is imperial jade?

Imperial jade is the finest quality of green jadeite: almost transparent, with a vivid emerald-green color. That is the definition GIA gives, and it is a description of color and translucency together. Imperial jade is not a separate mineral, not a place of origin and not a grade that a laboratory awards. Nothing stops a seller from printing the words on a tag, which is why they appear on far more jade than deserves them.

What the term covers, and what it does not

• It is jadeite. Jade is two different stones, jadeite and nephrite, and the imperial color occurs only in jadeite.
• It is a color in the right body. A top green in coarse, opaque material does not qualify. The green has to sit in fine-grained, highly translucent stone.
• It is not an origin. The material comes from Myanmar, but “Burmese” on a label says nothing about grade. Most Burmese jade is ordinary commercial stone.
• It is not a lab grade. No laboratory definition of imperial jade exists. A report can state that a piece is natural jadeite with no impregnation or dye. Whether the green earns the name is a judgment made by the buyer and the trade.

Where the name comes from

The name goes back to the Qing court. According to the history of the Burmese deposits published in GIA’s journal Gems & Gemology, the Qianlong emperor, who reigned from 1736 to 1796, extended Chinese jurisdiction into northern Burma in 1784, where the jadeite source was found. He favored jadeite’s rich colors, and the finest semi-transparent green came to be called imperial jade. GIA adds that the court once kept a standing order for all available material of this quality.

What qualifies as imperial green jade

The color

GIA describes the most valuable green as pure and penetrating: vivid, with no hint of gray, intense even from a distance, and ranging from pure green to slightly bluish or slightly yellowish green.

Chinese dealers judge the same thing with four words, and imperial green has to pass all four.

Term	Meaning	What fails
nong (浓)	Saturated	Thin or pale green
yang (阳)	Bright	Gray or dark green
zheng (正)	A pure green hue	Off-color green
yun (匀)	Evenly distributed	Patchy or streaked green

The Chinese trade name is diwang lü (帝王绿), “emperor green”. Dealers place it at the top of the green ladder, above the bright greens, apple green and the dull bean green at the bottom.

You may also meet zumu lü (祖母绿), the Chinese word for emerald, used as a color name for top green jadeite. Some dealers treat it as another name for diwang lü, others use it for a full green with a slight blue tint. Machine-translated listings sometimes render it simply as “emerald”. A jade described this way is still jadeite, and the two stones are compared in jade vs emerald.

The body

Color alone does not make imperial jade. GIA notes that the best jadeite is semitransparent, that semitransparent material appears to glow, which strengthens the green, and that opaque or cloudy patches lower the grade. It grades texture as fine, medium or coarse, sometimes called “old mine”, “relatively old mine” and “new mine”, and fine-grained stone has a smooth texture and high luster.

Dealers are stricter in practice. They apply the name only when top green sits in material of the glass type, boli zhong (玻璃种), or the ice type, bing zhong (冰种). The same green in coarse, opaque “bean” material is worth far less. Their rule of thumb is that structure and translucency set the floor of a jadeite’s value and color sets the ceiling.

What makes the color

The imperial green is caused by chromium, and only a very small amount is needed. In the Myanmar deposits, the Gems & Gemology authors explain, it formed where chromite in the surrounding serpentinite reacted with the fluid that was forming the jadeite, usually in late-stage veins. That is why bright green is scarce even inside good jadeite.

It is also why imperial green is not found in nephrite. Nephrite’s green comes from iron and is a darker, more muted “spinach” green.

Why imperial jade costs so much

Supply is tiny. The color exists only in those late veins, and only part of it falls in fine, translucent stone. Myanmar is the source. Officials of the state gem enterprise told the Gems & Gemology authors that the Nansibon area, about 60 km (37 miles) northwest of Hpakant, yields a large share of the country’s gem-quality imperial jadeite.

Demand started at the top and kept growing. GIA gives the Qing court’s standing order as one reason imperial jade became one of the world’s most expensive gems, and says demand for fine jadeite has grown with China’s economy and significantly outpaced the supply.

Size multiplies the price. With top-quality imperial jadeite, GIA says, slight differences in size make large differences in value. The finest material is usually cut as cabochons or beads, and top cabochons are rarely cut to standard sizes because the cutter is saving every bit of rough. Matched strands of large beads can sell for extremely high prices because matching color, texture and translucency across many beads is so difficult.

The auction record shows where that leads. The Hutton-Mdivani necklace, 27 graduated jadeite beads from about 15.4 to 19.2 mm (0.61 to 0.76 in) across, sold at Sotheby’s Hong Kong in April 2014 for US$27.44 million including buyer’s premium, which Guinness World Records lists as the highest price paid at auction for jade jewelry. Sotheby’s catalogued the beads as highly translucent, bright emerald green and of fine texture, with laboratory reports stating natural jadeite with no impregnation. It is a single record for an exceptional piece, not a guide to what other green jadeite sells for. How green compares with the other colors is covered in jade value by color.

How the term is misused

Any green jade gets called imperial. Since the term has no legal or laboratory definition, sellers stretch it to cover ordinary green jadeite that has neither the color nor the translucency described above.

The green can be manufactured. Type C jade is bleached, impregnated and dyed, and the dye can fade with heat and light. GIA lists dyeing, bleaching and impregnation, coatings and heat among jade treatments. A vivid green therefore proves nothing about grade, and the treatment classes are explained in type A, B and C jade.

Look-alikes exist that fool standard tests. GIA reports that some green omphacite seen in its laboratory has a color similar to fine green jadeite and the same standard gemological properties, and that separating the two takes Raman spectroscopy.

Lighting and cameras flatter the stone. Dealers warn that strong LED lamps and camera filters raise the apparent saturation of green, and that material which looks fine under livestream lights can look flat in daylight. GIA says buyers judge jadeite under both fluorescent and incandescent light, so ask to see a stone under more than one.

For any stone sold as imperial jade, ask for a report from a gemological laboratory stating natural jadeite with no impregnation and no dye. Looking closely narrows things down, and only the report settles what the stone is. The color you then judge yourself.

The greens just below imperial

GIA lists the next most prized greens as kingfisher jade, slightly less vivid than imperial, apple jade, an intense yellowish green, and moss-in-snow, translucent white with bright green veining or spots. After the greens, lavender is the next most valuable jadeite color. The full range is laid out in the guide to jade colors.