Art: Toad-Tiger

As every schoolboy knows, most jade is green. Yet jade when pure is white. It is made green by an admixture of other minerals, usually chromium. And it may in fact be any one of three very hard minerals: nephrite, jadeite and chloromelanite. Properly cut jade will give out a clear musical tone when struck.

Most jade comes from upper Burma and southeastern Turkestan. In the western hemisphere it is found in its natural state only in Alaska. Of cut jade five very fine specimens have been found in Mexico. One is now in Berlin, another in Stuttgart, a third in the National Museum of Mexico. A fourth is at Manhattan’s American Museum of Natural History. It is a light green jadeite axe-head, a foot long, with a snouted, bawling face on its side. Last week a fifth piece went on exhibition at the American Museum. Found 22 years ago by a U. S. engineer, now dead, during excavation work on a Mexican dam. it was bought and presented to the Museum by Mrs. Payne Whitney, Mrs. Charles Shipman Payson and John Hay (“Jock”) Whitney. Similar in workmanship to the axehead, it is called a Tenth Century tiger, representing the god Tezcatlipoca of the little-known Olmec people who once lived in the states of Vera Cruz, Oaxaca and Tabasco and are sometimes cited as the first users of rubber. The tiger looks more like a pale green toad with a semi-human crested head making a horrid bawling grimace. It is about the size of a big apple, with holes in the topknot and sides, apparently for use as an ornament. Last week jade experts swarmed around the toad-tiger.