Jade and silver earrings with the look of an antique piece: a white jade flower carved as a bell, with scalloped petals, hanging beneath an openwork lotus in silver tone metal. Drop earrings, articulated, they sway at the slightest movement.
In four lines
Two white jade flowers, carved as bells.
An openwork lotus and a filigree cap, in silver tone metal.
Drop and articulated: they sway with every gesture.
No size to choose: a delicate gift, and a safe one.
Two white jade flowers
These jade and silver earrings are two small sculptures first. Each stone is carved as a bell: a corolla that flares, petals that overlap, and a scalloped rim that waves like a real flower. The jade is a milky white, barely tinted with green, and the light passes through the petals where the stone thins out.
It is a soft white, closer to frosted porcelain than to chalk. It lights the face without hardening it.
A silver lotus to carry them
Above each flower, the silver tone metal draws an openwork lotus, its petals underlined by blackened recesses that bring out every line. Lower down, a filigree cap, worked with scrolls and small chased leaves, tops the jade bell. The hook, fine and curved, finishes the whole.
The entire design plays on the contrast between the worked silver, almost antique, and the smooth, luminous stone.
Earrings that sway
The lotus and the flower are joined by small rings: each earring is articulated at two points, and the bell swings at the slightest movement of the head. These are long earrings, dropping well below the lobe, noticed from the front as from the side.
Each flower is carved from the stone: from one ear to the other, the petals and the white may vary slightly. That is the mark of a pair in stone.
What to wear them with
White and silver like cool tones and clean contrasts: a black dress, a grey jumper, a navy shirt. With the hair up, they come fully into their own. Their whiteness and their flower shape also make them earrings for an occasion, a wedding or a celebration.
No size to choose: it is a simple gift to give, and one that resembles no other. Giving a jade piece.
Wearing them, and keeping them beautiful
The blackened recesses of the metal are a deliberate patina: they are what draws the lotus. So do not use a silver dip, which would erase it; a soft dry cloth is enough. For the flowers, a little lukewarm water and a mild soap, without soaking the cap. Never ultrasonics, steam or solvent.
Take them off to sleep and for sport: the carved petals have fine edges, which fear a sharp knock. Since the alloy of the hooks is not stated, if your lobes are sensitive, wear them for short spells at first. Store them together, in their pouch. Care in detail.
Additional information
Stone
Jadeite or nephrite, not resolved
Colour
White
Stone shape
Carving in the round
Motif
Flower
Mounting
Ear wire
Metal
Silver tone, alloy not stated
Setting
Bead cap
Worn by
Women
Paired stones
None, jade only
Mineral family
Calcic amphibole, Sodium aluminium pyroxene
Hardness (Mohs)
6 to 7
Reference density
2.90 to 3.36 g/cm³
Toughness
Exceptional, interlocking crystals
Treatment
Not determined
Origin
Outside Burma, country of extraction not confirmed
What tradition attributes to the lotus and to the jade flower
What follows changes register, and I flag it rather than blending it into the rest of the page. Nothing here is demonstrated. These are usages and beliefs, old and documented, that I report because they are part of the history of this stone. No piece of jewellery in this shop is sold as a treatment, and I attribute no effect to this one.
A stone of moral virtueIn Confucian thought, jade is associated with qualities of character rather than with effects on the body: uprightness, constancy, restraint. It is the best documented meaning of all.
The lotus that rises from the mudIn the eleventh century, the scholar Zhou Dunyi wrote a short text that has stayed famous: he loves the lotus because it rises from the mud without being soiled by it. Since then the flower stands for uprightness that does not let itself be stained.
The throne of the buddhasIn Buddhist art, buddhas and bodhisattvas sit or stand on an open lotus flower. The lotus there is the seat of awakening.
The bell flowerA flower carved as a bell recalls lily of the valley, which in France is given on the first of May as a token of luck, a custom running back to the Renaissance. A local habit for a stone flower that comes from far away.
Dispatch within 48 hours of your order being confirmed, for delivery within 14 days from dispatch. I keep no stock in reserve, and I will not promise a date I could not meet.
Shipping Costs
€6.99 whatever the destination, free on orders over €47 to France, Belgium, Switzerland and Luxembourg. The exact amount is shown in your basket before you pay.
The Packaging, and Why It Matters
Every piece travels in its own pouch, kept apart from the others. This is not a question of presentation: the hardness of jade is unremarkable, between 6 and 6.5 for nephrite and 6.5 to 7 for jadeite, and the quartz in ordinary household dust sits at 7. Two pieces of jewellery that travel together arrive marked.
Fourteen Days to Change Your Mind
No need to give a reason. An email is enough to open a return; there is no form to fill in. Return postage is at your expense, unless the piece does not match its listing or arrives damaged.
Lukewarm water, mild soap, a soft cloth. A very soft brush for the hollows of a carving. That is all, and it is enough.
What You Must Never Do, and Why
No ultrasonic cleaners, no steam, no solvents, no heat source. This is not a precaution for show: the treatment status of my pieces is undetermined. My supplier does not know it, and weighing identifies the mineral without telling me anything about a possible resin impregnation. Resin withstands neither heat nor solvents, so every piece is handled as though it might contain some. The information sheet on treatments.
Scratches, and Where They Come From
Jade is tough, meaning very difficult to break: its structure of interlocking crystals resists cracking, and that is what made it usable for axe heads in the Neolithic. Its hardness, by contrast, is unremarkable, 6 to 6.5 for nephrite and 6.5 to 7 for jadeite. The quartz in ordinary household dust sits at 7: that is what dulls a jade, not knocks. The difference between the two.
Day to Day
Put the piece on after perfume and cream, never before. Take it off for housework, gardening and sport, where knocks against hard edges are common. Store each piece on its own, in its pouch. On a strand of beads, the thread wears out before the stone: it gets restrung, and there is nothing abnormal about that.
My name is Jade. French, from Morbihan, living in Tallinn. I choose the pieces and have them mounted: I mine nothing, I cut nothing, and the metalwork is not done by my hand. What I bring is the selection, and with this material that is what decides everything.
I am not a gemmologist, not a lapidary, not a therapist, and I do not claim to be.
I Weigh, I Do Not Certify
Before a listing goes online, I order one example of it for myself. When it reaches me unmounted, I weigh it in air, then suspended from a thread in a glass of water: the ratio of the two masses gives the density, and that figure separates jadeite, nephrite, serpentine and dyed quartzite without ambiguity.
One example per listing, and not every piece. I do not handle the piece that is sent to you, and I would rather write that down than let you believe otherwise. The method, with its three limits.
What I Cannot Know
The treatment status of my pieces. My supplier does not know it, and the scales do not tell me: they identify the mineral, not the resin impregnation. Only infrared spectroscopy in a laboratory would settle it, and I do not have that done. So you will never read “Grade A jadeite”, “Type A” or “untreated” on this site. The information sheet.
Where My Jade Comes From
No Burmese jadeite, and the first reason is legal. Not the one you read everywhere: the JADE Act of 2008 did ban these stones in the United States, but that ban was lifted on 7 October 2016. What applies today dates from 8 April 2021: the US Treasury sanctioned Myanma Gems Enterprise, the state company that controls the Burmese gem trade. So there is no blanket ban, but a US person is not allowed to trade with that entity, and a stone never tells you where it has been. A single supply chain serves ten markets, so it has to hold up in the most demanding of them. When an origin is not confirmed to me in writing, the listing does not state it. My origin charter.
