is it an ellipse shape seen from the side?

Yes it is .

Canadian nephrite (from British Columbia) has been made into ornaments in Taiwan, in great quantities, since the 1970s. It very much resembles local Taiwanese jade.

Is that what you intended by "BC"?

Jamey

Yes it is from Ogden lake British Columbia Canada . Huge amounts of BC jade was trucked south of the border to northern Washington state years ago to be made into tiles , wash basins , headstones and counter tops. We were able to pick up left over pieces for a song. Today BC jade production is largely very high grade and production is limited to keep the price high. Quebec nephrite jade from the Black Lake deposit has somewhat filled the counter top demand and again we have been able to acquire excellent scrap jade in large amounts..I will post a pendant of Quebec jade soon.

To be clear this is fairly typical jade from 40 years ago. I am aware of the famous Taiwanese chatoyant nephrite and those supplies are apparently mined out and are being replaced with new chatoyant jade mining in Washington state where chatoyant nephrite is fairly common.

To be clear this is fairly typical jade from 40 years ago. I am aware of the famous Taiwanese chatoyant nephrite and those supplies are apparently mined out and are being replaced with new chatoyant jade mining in Washington state where chatoyant nephrite is fairly common.

Chatoyant Washington jade. Chatoyantcy is a type of asterism , a phenomena of light being reflected back to the viewer from parallel fibers in the stone. In a cab with it's essentially two dimension character one can align the chatoyantcy while cutting to produce a chatoyant line in the center of the stone , a cats eye. Beads don't do that but you get a unlocalized silvery sheen as in this piece. This was lit from above and below.The Taiwanese chatoyant jade was very famous but I have only seen pictures of it as cabs , never as beads. Economically this makes sense as the Taiwanese cats eye jade cabs were quite highly priced and in great demand.

About a decade ago (+ or -), James Lankton had taken up residence in Korea, and worked as an archaeologist and researcher. One of his interesting sojourns was to the jade mines in Taiwan—that were being newly exploited for jade to make beads.

I think he reported all this for Beads-L. But, after two hacks and the destruction of their archive, that information would not be easy to retrieve. I ought to have these communications in my Net Archive. At the least, as stored messages.

It is beyond my knowledge whether these mines are "the same mines" as those previously said to be "played out," or not. But I made the leap of faith that they are, because nothing to the contrary was said.

In any event, the Taiwanese have been making beads from local jade, again, in recent years.

JDA.

Years ago they used explosives on the jade and it ruined lots of it. The jade was apparently found while deep hard rock mining and was not of primary interest. Jade deposits pinch in and out and can extend for dozens of miles in fault zones so it does make sense that enterprising people could discover another deposit. The initial deposit was extraordinary because it was chatoyant nephrite. Thanks for the updated information.

OMG, it's beautiful!

Love it. Again, great piece Frank. This is a very attractive green.
I have not come across jade beads from BC or Washington State . Does that mean it is commercially not interesting enough, or maybe I might not look in the right places ….

The supply of excellent jade from BC is large each year but it is manipulated to keep the price stable. I suspect that jade cabs which are easy to make and market in China provides an adequate market with the expansion of China's middle class. Jade is difficult to polish and unpredictable and round beads are by far the hardest shape to overcome if the rough has orange peel or undercutting problems. The people who find jade in Washington for the last 40 years are essentially anti mining and are happy with what weathers out of the ground naturally. The jade is found on federal land and can only be sold if it was collected on a valid claim which has to be a developed mine. Two billionaires have claimed much of the jade and harass casual collectors by claiming that all the jade in rivers and creeks came from their deposits and are therefore theirs. Ridiculous until the feds knock on your door which is happening to people collecting 20 and 30 miles from any claim. Billionaire mining is about accruing losses to shelter other income so I do not forsee any meaningful production.

Beautiful pendant, Frank.
A couple of years ago, I picked up a few interesting pieces in a shop in Victoria, BC. It was advertised as BC Jade and I picked mostly what looked to me like chatoyant pieces, with some blueish areas. I haven't cut any yet but I also picked up a lovely strand of beads.

Off subject but has anyone had any luck finding the Nephrite Jade around Big Sur. California, particularly Jade Cove area? Sounds like a diver can possibly recover large beautiful varied specimens, though I've heard mixed info about where to collect and site legality issues (hand samples only on beach, etc.). An acquaintance in a Rock Hound group recently recovered two apparently nice large chunks in that general area. Heard about the Jade Festivals in the area... I believe they had to cancel last week's 3rd annual June 12th Monterey Jade Festival because of Covid19, but have plans for next year. The 27th annual Big Sur Jade Festival is scheduled for Oct. 9th-11th. Has anyone had experience with this jade? It certainly looks promising. Has anyone been Jade hunting in that area? Would love some firsthand feedback.
I Am including some Diving for Jade Info found on the internet- for that area which also includes Beach and other info: http://californiadiver.com/diving-jade-cove/
Thanks, Anne

Many hundreds of pieces of Jade Cove jade are found each year. A gentleman who's trade name is Jade Diver has been making great beads and bangles from Jade Cove rough for a few years . Other coves in the area have been producing as well.Eel river has good jade as well but is much harder to collect due to it's ruggedness. I'm lucky as my easiest jade spot is a small stream that gets replenished often and has easy access not too far from the grain elevator and Costco. You can feed the birds the people and the passions in one quick trip.

The gift store at the famous resort ( Henry Miller, Liz Taylor, etc.. used to party there) called Napenthe used to carry lovely local jade jewelry. I have a couple of nicely made pairs... one flat ovals and one long narrow rectangles made from Big Sur Jade.

I've been a pebble puppy (less professional than a rock hound) all my life. These are small pebbles I collected from a beach at Point Reyes. I've been told some of them are "jade". All I know is there are 3-4 shades of green I've collected, ranging from deep green to an almost translucent 'aventurine'-looking in color. (The bright green one in the middle at the bottom is sea glass.)

As a kid on the Mendocino coast in the 60s we called the green ones California Jade... but most of that may be some sort of jasper....Big Sur Jade has a different quality, more translucence.

Up and down the coast the adventurine colored pebbles are almost always chert.We have boulders the size of cars up here of that coloored chert, mesmerizing on that scale but little of it is clean enough on close inspection for bead making.Nice stash. Up by Brookings there are a few beaches with orange and black pebbles of hydrogrosular garnet which are unique.

The Happy Camp California area streams have pebbles of jade and vesuvianite which is called California jade as well. Happy Camp vesuvianite ( idocrase) is often found in world class translucent green pebbles.

We've lived in the northeast and up and down the eastern coast, and now California.
What was really cool was traveling east to Death Valley a few years ago, and then out to Mono Lake and Yosemite last year. I found bigger, rougher examples of the same rocks I found on the coast. So cool to see "rough", then "wind-polished" (in Death Valley) and then water-and-sand-tumbled (on the coast.)
Surprisingly, California rocks are similar, in my mind, to Lake Superior beach stones, and Cape Cod beach stones. A park ranger at Cape Cod said that's because the same glacier brought all those rocks down a jillion years ago. (Michigan and Cape Cod, that is.) But a lot of them are very similar to CA rocks, so I'm wondering....
Huge range of colors, lots of inclusions and intrusions. Whenever I'm having a particularly bad day/month/year, the most soothing activity for me is beach-combing. Er...hunter/gathering.

California has in common with western Washington the Franciscan terraine which begins just north of the Golden Gate and is the dominant rock west of Napa valley until the Oregon border.This is jade country. The Franciscan came north as an island arc chain from the far south of Mexico and smashed into the things that had smashed into the continent previously. RG Coleman was a Stanford professor of geology who was the state jade geology expert. He wrote non academic articles also. A very good paper on the Clear lake jade belt was still on the internet recently but has been a bit hard to find the last 10 years.