Women’s jade necklace, a pierced disc of translucent water green hanging from a fine sterling silver chain. The wire passes through the hole and coils: no setting.
Nothing covers the stone, neither face, nor back, nor girdle. On a translucent jade, that is the best that can be done: the light passes through without being stopped by a metal cup.
The shape is called a peace buckle. Length chosen above the buy button. Mounted, so not weighable. Treatment status not determined.
A women’s jade necklace built on a pierced disc of translucent water green, hanging from a fine sterling silver chain. The silver wire passes through the central hole and coils on itself: there is no glued bail, no claw and no setting.
In four lines
Pierced disc in water green, translucent, hung by a coiled silver wire.
No setting: nothing covers the stone, girdle included.
The shape is called a peace buckle, and it has no sharp edge and no point.
Mounted, so not weighable: no figure will be published, and this page says so.
Nothing covers the stone, and that is the point of this mounting
On most pendants, the metal bites into the stone: a band folded over the rim, claws on top, or a bail glued to the girdle. Here, a simple silver wire passes through the hole and coils above it. The disc is visible whole, on both sides and at the girdle.
For a translucent stone, that is the best that can be done: the light passes through without being stopped by a metal cup, and that is how you really see a jade. The other side of the coin is that a bare stone takes edge knocks first, but a flat disc has precisely no edge to chip.
The pierced disc, a shape with a name
This flat ring with a central hole is called in China the peace buckle. It is an old shape, smaller and thicker than the great Bi disc of Neolithic burials from which it descends, and it is worn drilled, with no mount, exactly as here.
I claim no effect for it, this site claims none for any stone. But it has a very concrete merit I have just written: no sharp edge, no point, no corner, which is exactly what a stone of ordinary hardness needs. The difference between hardness and toughness.
A water green, and what it is worth
This stone is a pale, clearly translucent green, the one called water green. On jadeite, that green comes from a low chromium content; on nephrite, from a low iron content. The two minerals are not related at all, and it took a laboratory to separate them: Alexis Damour, in 1863. What sets them apart.
The market overvalues intense green and looks down on pale green. That is a pricing convention, not a hierarchy of material, and the translucency of a water green shows far better than that of a dark green. What makes the price of a jade.
The chain, and what to know about it
The chain is fine, with curb links, in sterling silver. The length is chosen above the buy button. On a fine chain, the pendant decides how the necklace falls: a flat disc like this one lies flat against the skin and does not tip over.
Sterling silver tarnishes in air, which is normal and comes off with a silver cloth, carefully avoiding the stone. Warm water, a mild soap, a soft cloth for the jade. Never ultrasonic, never steam, never solvent: since the treatment status is unknown, any resin would not stand it. Care in detail.
Additional information
Stone
Jadeite or nephrite, not resolved
Colour
Water green
Stone shape
Pierced disc
Motif
No motif
Mounting
Chain
Metal
Sterling silver 925
Setting
Drilled stone
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 jade necklace
What follows changes register, and I flag it rather than blending it into the rest of the page. None of it is proven. These are customs and beliefs, old and documented, which 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 claim no effect for this one.
The stone worn against the skinJade worn at the neck takes the temperature of the body in a few minutes and keeps it. That is a physical property, conductivity, and several traditions have made something quite different of it. I stay with the first.
A stone of moral virtueIn Confucian thought, jade is associated with qualities of character rather than effects on the body: uprightness, constancy, restraint. It is the best documented meaning of them all.
The void that makes the objectThe Tao Te Ching observes that it is the void at the centre of the hub that makes the wheel turn, and the hollow of the vase that makes it useful. The hole in the disc is readily read that way: it is what makes the piece.
The peace buckleThe small pierced disc carries in Chinese a name that translates as peace buckle, and it descends from the great Bi disc of Neolithic burials. It is one of the rare shapes of jade whose traditional name is attested and stable.
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.
Getting the size wrong is the most common reason for a return in this category, and jade cannot be resized the way a solid metal band can. Two minutes spent measuring almost always avoids it. The size guide.
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.
