Over 200 works--drawn from prestigious French and international collections, including some of the most magnificient masterpieces from the Chinese imperial collections--here recreate the epic story of the history and aesthetics of jade. From the dawn of Chinese civilization, when it became imbued with its quintessential qualities, to the 1920s, when this stone "more precious than gold" became the source of inspiration for modernist jewelry and objets d'art, the authoritative essays and superb illustrations contained in these pages lift the veil on the history of this quintessential expression of Chinese culture. "The gentleman of Antiquity found the likeness of all excellent qualities in jade. Warm, smooth and glossy, it appeared to them like benevolence. Fine, compact and strong, like intelligence. Its radiance rising as a rainbow, like heaven. Its spirit appearing in the mountains and streams, like earth" --Confucius