Product City Roast Whole Bean (1lb) successfully added to compare list
Product Full City Roast Ground (1lb) successfully added to compare list
Product Espresso Whole Bean (1lb) successfully added to compare list
Product City Roast Ground (1lb) successfully added to compare list
Product City Roast Ground (5lbs) successfully added to compare list
Product Espresso Ground (1lb) successfully added to compare list
Product Full City Roast Ground (5lbs) successfully added to compare list
Compare list successfully cleared
Jade
Jade has been a prized stone in Mesoamerica and the Far East for at least 3000 years. Aztec law permitted only the emperor and nobles to wear jade, and archeological evidence indicates that jade was the sacred rock of the Maya. Montezuma once paid homage to Cortes with two jade jewels, each worth more than “two loads of gold.”
The Spanish conquest of the new world destroyed the jade trade, and within 50 years of the Spanish arrival, jade craftsmanship died out, the locations of the mines were forgotten, and virtually all known jade was sold in Europe or otherwise exhausted. Mineralogy was less than a science at the time. Jade was confused with emerald, nephrite was confused with jade. Today, the term ‘jade’ applies to two different minerals, jadeite and nephrite.
Jadeite, the harder of the two minerals, lay forgotten in the Motagua Valley of Guatemala for nearly 400 years. The stones run from translucent to opaque, from white to black, from pure jade to jades with inclusions of amethyst and actinolite. Francisco now brings you many of the special stones he has found in his 40 years of trekking Guatemala in search of the Maya’s blood stone.
Loading...