Raw jade, a block of nephrite broken on every face and never polished. Matte green, white patches, ocher runs of iron oxide.
A rough piece hides nothing: you see the grain of the fracture, the real distribution of the colour and the traces of weathering, which polishing closes over. Wet it to see the colour a polish would give.
A bare, unpolished stone: it is the object weighing measures best, and the figure will be published here with its date. Treatment status not determined.
A block of raw jade, in nephrite, broken on every face and never polished. The green is matte, without the slightest shine, mixed with white patches and streaked with ocher runs of iron oxide. It is the most honest piece in the catalogue: nothing is hidden in it because nothing has been done to it.
In four lines
A block neither cut nor polished, broken on every face.
Matte green, white patches, ocher runs of iron oxide.
A bare, unpolished stone: the object weighing measures best.
A rough piece is not worn. It is an object to hold, to set down, to look at.
What a rough piece shows and a polish hides
Polishing closes the surface of a stone: it erases the grain, evens out the colour and gives everything a similar shine. That is what makes jade beautiful, and it is also what makes well-worked serpentine hard to tell from jade in a photo.
A rough piece hides nothing. You see the grain of the fracture, fibrous and catchy on nephrite, glassier and shell-shaped on quartz. You see the real distribution of the colour, in patches and veins, without a polish having leveled it. And you see the traces of weathering, here ocher runs of iron oxide, which tell of the stone’s time in the ground.
None of these signs is proof, and I will not present them as such. They only make examination possible, where a polished, mounted object rules it out. The checks that need no equipment.
The matte green, and why it is not disappointing
Raw jade does not shine. The green looks dull, almost powdery, very far from the glow of this shop’s cabochons. It is not a quality flaw, it is the surface finish. The same stone, polished, would light up.
If you want to judge it, wet it: the water fills the tiny irregularities of the fracture and brings out, for a few minutes, roughly the colour a polish would give. It is what buyers do at stone markets, and it costs nothing. The colours of jade.
Nephrite, and why it was made into axes
This piece is listed as nephrite, a calcium amphibole, one of the two minerals the word jade covers. The other is jadeite, a pyroxene, and the two are not related at all: Alexis Damour established this in 1863. What sets them apart.
On a raw block, the property that matters can be felt in the hand: jade is tough. Its structure of interlocking fibers resists the spread of a crack, which explains why polished axes were made from it in the Neolithic and why a block this size does not split with one hammer blow. Its hardness, however, is ordinary, 6 to 6.5. The difference between hardness and toughness.
What to do with it
A rough piece is not worn. It is set down, held in the hand, used as a paperweight, a reference sample or a starting point for anyone who wants to have it cut. There is no size to choose, no special care, and no fragile mounting.
A rinse in lukewarm water with a mild soap is enough, with a soft brush for the hollows of the fracture. Never ultrasonic cleaners, never steam, never solvents, as with every piece in this catalogue whose treatment status is not determined. Care in detail.
Additional information
Stone
Néphrite
Colour
Two tone
Stone shape
Rough stone
Motif
No motif
Mounting
None
Metal
None
Setting
No setting
Worn by
Unisex
Paired stones
None, jade only
Mineral family
Calcic amphibole
Hardness (Mohs)
6 to 6.5
Reference density
2.90 to 3.03 g/cm³
Toughness
Exceptional, interlocking crystals
Treatment
Not determined
Origin
Outside Burma, country of extraction not confirmed
Delivery Times
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.
