These unique carvings feature a BC Canadian jade carved bear with a carved fish on a star marble base. These are one of a kind and all are inspired by Lina's time in the Rockies. We hope you enjoy your carving, as it is a beautiful artist piece, and a lasting memory of your time in the Canadian Rocky Mountains.
Our Master carver, Lina, comes from a family of carvers. Her grandfather was a Burmese Jade carver in the early 1900s. Lina has been carving since she was a young child, starting with wood and soon migrating to beautiful stones such as Canadian Jade, Alberta Petrified Wood, Amethyst, Rose Quartz, and other crystals and stones. Lina designs and carves all our signature pieces.
Lina currently lives in the Greater Vancouver Area, where her studio is located. While she carves our larger (signed) pieces, her apprentices carve each of our smaller, or unsigned, carvings. Lina trains her apprentices in her personal, unique style of carving, which utilizes as much of the natural stone as possible to create a truly unique bear. This is a direct contradiction to standard stone carving methods, which utilizes an assembly line method of carving, where each bear will turn out exactly the same as the one before. Because of Linas method, each apprentice is tasked with creating something unique with as little stone waste as possible, which teaches them to problem solve and really utilize and cultivate their own creative methods.
She believes that if a carving reminds you of a place, the stone should be from there as well.
Canadian jade rates with the worlds best.Canadian jade is a type of nephrite jade that ranges in color from light green to dark green, and sometimes even black. The Canadian jade mines are the largest jade producing mines in the world. As many Canadian mines are slowly being depleted, the price of jade keeps going up as it becomes scarcer.
Star Marble is a type of crystalline limestone, cherished for its pure white colour with glittering specks. Formed in shallow, calm, marine waters, star marble is believed to be made up of skeletal fragments of marine organisims such as coral. It is also formed from silica and crystals, which would have formed to fill natural gaps left in the stone, giving each piece its sparkling appearance.