Art adventures: Jade carving

One of the activities I looked forward to in New Zealand was jade carving. I found out about the opportunity shortly after arriving when a girl in our first lodge showed me a beautiful pendant she’d made. As Stray had a jade-carving activity available during the West Coast leg of our travels, I decided to sign up.

Carving day started relatively early as we had to be finished and on the road to our next destination by 12:30. Barrytown carver, Hamish, picked up fellow traveler, Sarah, and me at 8am and drove us to his nearby workshop with views of the Western coast range. He asked what we wanted to make and I pulled out my adventurous sketches. “Those will take you a week,” he said. “We’ve only got four hours.”

He steered me toward carving a simple double loop, popular in Maori carvings as a symbol of infinity or the bonding of two lives. I immediately decided that I would give my carving to Brian and we got to work. Starting with a centimeter-thick piece of jade, Hamish drew out a rough pattern for me. First step, drill out the center holes. New Zealand jade (also called pounamu) is so strong that the Maori used it for hatchet blades and other weapons; as a result, it must be cut with diamond-coated tools.

After drilling the center holes, I began shaping the outside curves using a large sander under running water. Although I’d known that jade work had to be done using water — the white powder it produces during sanding and shaping is toxic — it is somewhat strange to use electric tools in water.

For the next several hours, I shaped and ground, and shaped and ground, and my piece began looking more and more like a double loop. Unfortunately, as the shape came into being, I became more paranoid about screwing it up and got slower and more cautious. Hamish often stepped in to keep me on track with finishing the pendant in time, and to smooth out any errors I’d made. I asked him how long a similar pendant would take him and he said about an hour and a half. Wow!

Our four-and-a-half hours ran out quickly. At the end, I did three quick polishing rounds with different grades of diamond-coated sandpaper and then Hamish rubbed on some oil and strung it on an adjustable black cord. Voilà! Brian’s necklace was done. I can’t say I’ll undertake another carving project anytime soon, but it was an interesting experience to have at least once.

I presented Brian’s necklace to him as soon as we arrived back at camp. When I’d visited Ghana last fall, I’d gotten Brian a necklace per his request, but he had ultimately decided he couldn’t wear it because the “energy felt weird.” I was therefore somewhat trepidatious about the jade carving, but he says it feels great and has been wearing it ever since. Success! I love looking at it on him, both because I think it looks nice and because I’m proud that, little mistakes and all, I actually made it.

It turns out that carving this piece for Brian instead of myself worked out really well. I have since tried on his necklace, and the energy of the New Zealand jade/greenstone feels weird to me. I didn’t notice when working with it, but it was immediately noticeable when hanging around my neck. Isn’t it interesting that something that works so well for my husband doesn’t work for me at all?

Have you ever had trouble wearing a piece of jewelry because of how it felt? Why do you think that was?

Thanks,