gems, jade, pyroxene jade, fei cui, jadeite, jadeite axe, Britain, Great Britain, Beckford, UK

This fine jadeite axe was delivered in 1962 to a building site in Tewkesbury in a load of gravel from the pits of the Gloucestershire Sand and Gravel Company at Beckford on the Gloucestershire–Worcestershire border. The axe, thought to be for ceremonial purposes, weighs 218.5 grams and measures 16.5 cm long, 6.36 cm at its widest point, and 1.79 cm thick, again at its maximum. It has a specific gravity of 3.275, which places it within the lower range of the pyroxene group. It is of a light mottled green colour, highly polished, and is aesthetically satisfying to see and to handle. An axe, identical in shape and colour, can be seen illustrated in colour, the smaller and paler of the two shown, in From Stone to Art by F.E.G. Powell (1966) [119], fig. 114, the axe having been found with jadeite rings in the passage grave at Mané-er-Hrock in Brittany. D. I. Campbell Smith of the Department of Mineralogy of the British Museum, at the request of the Implement Petrology Committee of the S.W. Museums’ Group, identified its material as jadeite but, because it was so perfect a specimen, would not section it. A report on the axe should be included in the fifth report of the committee under Glos. 64, serial number 1391.