My experience with jade is that  the simplest subjects, showing the greatest amount of uninterrupted surface, make the finest jade art.  There are few jade carvings in the world that exceed the beauty found in a simple egg.  Having free rein to create an artwork from the Emperor stone,  I reasoned that the fineness of the piece would be best exploited by exposing the gem-like substance of the inner stone while minimizing any clever, intricate carving.  I mentioned on the previous page that the other half of the ‘lense’ from which the Emperor stone was cut is being presently carved into a Buddha.  It will be a fine carving to be sure—but as a sculptural subject, it is a use of jade that is inferior to that of The Emperor’s Sunrise.   I’ll be posting a photo of it as soon as one is available.  Following my philosophy of simplicity, I conceived of the notion of hewing out  a stylized orb (the 'sun') on the stone’s face, relieved only enough so that it appears to float.  The orb is  obscured over approximately its lower third by stylized mountains, the lower lesser range on the left, the higher greater range on the right.  I worked at hewing the ‘mountains’ into the style of a Chinese watercolor.  I thought it appropriate to think of it as a sunrise, having long favored the promise a sunrise holds over the sense of finality of  a sunset; hence I’ve entitled the work ‘The Emperor’s Sunrise’.     The sun, where exposed, has been brought to a high gleaming polish; the mountains are matte finished, displaying original tool-marks, namely diamond-saw tracks on the facing surfaces, hammer-broken top edges.  The remaining original stone surface is entirely natural i.e., as found in the quarry, save the bottom of the stone which has been sawed flat. 

There is no reference to scale in the image above, so take a look at more images on the next page >>>>