Because my mother was born in Manila in much of my life I lived the life of the Far East in song and voice (my mother’s and my grandmother’s). In one of our closets there was a heavy black box that contained their jewels. Many of them had been purchased in Paris by my grandfather Don Tirso de Irureta Goyena. But there was also a collection that was made to order and purchased in Manila or Hong Kong. Of interest to me as the very sight of them was exotic were “the jades”. I still have the jades. They are in a far safer bank safety box.

As Rosemary and I prepare for the holidays I have asked her to wear my mother’s baroque pearls in an Early Music Vancouver concert on the23. We are no longer invited to parties as we once were so chances are that the jades will remain at the bank.

Thinking about those jades I knew I had many photographs to illustrate this as for a very good magazine (now gone) published by the Mandarin Hotel chain I took pictures of Vancouver jade in many situations. This one was about jade tiles. The very rich could possibly tile their bathroom with them?

My subject was an exquisite ecdysiast.

I love the voice of the Chinese-Born poet Sarah Howe and here is a link to her reading from The Loop of Jade.

Sarah Howe reads from The Loop of Jade