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Rare red agate makes a comeback
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China’s world of luxury
For many people, luxury is about obviously expensive, imported brands of fashion, handbags, shoes, jewelry, watches, automobiles, houses, vacation destinations, costly cuisine and so on.
One dictionary describes “luxury” as: 1) the state of great comfort and extravagant living; 2) an inessential, desirable item that is expensive or difficult to obtain.
Real Chinese luxury can be much more subtle, simple and understated.
In this biweekly series on luxury in China, we explore its varieties and meanings past and present.
Traditional sources of the red agate were almost exhausted when a new origin was found. Qu Zhi takes a close look.
Agate, a semi-precious, micro-crystalline variety of silica that is found in nature in many different colors, is generally not rare or especially expensive.
But when it is of a type that is found only in China and is often used for carving jewelry, adornments and objects of art, the value soars.
Nanhong agate (南红), which is especially valued if red and even more valuable if it’s comprised of alternating layers of red and white, is a luxury item whose price has increased greatly. It has a waxy, opaque appearance and grows brighter as it is handled.
There are different versions defining the name. One prevailing explanation is that the red agate from Yunnan Province is said to be the most valuable — nan meaning Yunnan, hong for red — thus the name “Nanhong.”
High-quality Nanhong agate has uniform color saturation. A carved piece the size of an egg can be sold for 1 million yuan (US$162,700) even if the place where it was produced is not the best. Since Nanhong agate is scarce — especially so until a new source was found recently — and often contains many cracks, carved artwork made from the stone is rare and in the past was almost always owned by the imperial family.
One vase displayed at the Palace Museum in Beijing that was made during the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911) under the reign of Emperor Qianlong (1735-1796) is priceless, and reportedly was the emperor’s favorite.
Made of red-and-white agate, the vase depicts two fish leaping from the sea. Their tails touch, and both the open mouths and carved-out bellies were made to accommodate flower arrangements. The fins and scales are well defined and each mouth holds a bead.
The vase is 23cm high and 12.5cm wide, carved in the “ingenious craftsmanship” technique that first appeared during the Shang Period (16th century-11th century BC).
Nanhong agate started to gain popularity as far back as the Western Han Dynasty (206 BC-AD 24). A large amount was discovered as necklaces in a cemetery for nobles used from AD 800 to 1,000 in Houma, Shanxi Province.
In Buddhist culture, red agate is believed to be conducive to digestion, improving stomach and intestinal functions, while it also is said to inspire courage and confidence.
For Chinese people, red embodies the idea of prosperity. Many think it will bring luck and ward off misfortune.
Ancient Nanhong agate originally came from Gansu and Yunnan provinces and it usually is the color of red or pink coral. In the late Qing Dynasty, the sources of the stone were almost exhausted, and Nanhong agate gradually faded from the public eye. The stones that were found were very small and many had too many cracks to be fashioned into valuable objects.
In 2009, on Liang Mountain in southwestern China’s Sichuan Province, a new source of Nanhong agate, dark red in color, was discovered and new objects made as the stone returned to the fine arts market. Collectors and the wealthy have since pushed prices to new heights.
Nanhong agate is also the ideal substitute for coral ornaments and jewelry, which comes from threatened reefs.
Han Huizhi, an experienced collector from Shanghai, started to pay close attention to Nanhong agate in 2005.
“Back then, Nanhong agate would often be found sitting on a shelf by itself, untouched, in the corner of an antique shop,” Han says. “At first, I didn’t find them very extraordinary, to tell you the truth,” Han says. Then, as friends introduced him to the stone, he started his collection.
Han leaned over, showing a Nanhong agate bracelet of a red coral color on his wrist. The bracelet of 18 round beads, from the Qing Dynasty, became the first object in his collection. He bought it at an antique shop in Shanghai in 2007 for 6,000 yuan.
“Just few months after I bought it, a collector came to me and offered 25,000 yuan to buy it, but I turned him down. For me, it is a divine piece for collecting, not investment,” he says. Now each bead could fetch at least 10,000 yuan.
Han once bought a Nanhong agate thumb ring in Sichuan Province. It was white and red with a glazed surface, an antique from late Ming Dynasty (1368-1644). He accidentally dropped it on the floor and it broke into pieces. He put it back together, but “once it has cracks, even if they’re not that visible, it loses a certain value,” he says, regretfully.
Since flawless Nanhong agate is so difficult to find, pieces with cracks have started to gain more acceptance on the market.
Antique Nanhong agate often is of better quality than newer objects, according to Han. “It has much greater density and the color is purer and brighter. You can distinguish the difference very quickly,” he says.
Even though carving tools were not as advanced as what is used today, antique Nanhong pieces are more delicate in most cases, he says.
Han says he never thought the price of the stone would rise so sharply, which he said sometimes makes pieces too expensive for him to buy. “Recently I bought 100 grams of raw material of newly sourced Nanhong agate, and it cost me 20,000 yuan.”
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