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A particularly charming aspect of collecting jade  is the hidden meaning in the carvings.  Jade carvings are often symbolic puns on spoken Chinese.  Bats, for example, are a symbol of happiness or blessings because the spoken syllable for bat (fu) sounds the same as that of blessing.  Bats are often shown upside down because the [...]

Fatigue is the best pillow – so said Benjamin Franklin – but he might have been off the mark on that.
In 1983 a pair of early 18th century needlework pillows sold at a London auction for over $30,000 marking antique pillows as serious objects for study and collection.
Studying the history of pillows is not easy, [...]

It is seductive, mysterious, addictive–it’s jade. People have died for it. Legends surround it. A Chinese emperor once offered fifteen cities for a jade carving so small that it fit in the palm of his hand. Jade was thought to be a male stone, so naked virgins were sent to gather it from stream beds [...]

Ah – there’s nothing like a fresh coat of paint – right? Well, you might want to think about that for a minute before you start picking those colors. The “clean” smell of new paint is actually the vapor released from the toxic ingredients used as solvents in conventional paints. Known as volatile organic compounds [...]

If you use colored light for effect in your home, be aware that a colored light will distort all the colors in a room except its own color. This can produce an effect so radical that the objects on which the light falls may become unrecognizable. Below are listed some of the effects you can [...]