A jade gourd to wear: a pendant shaped like a double gourd, cut from celadon-green nephrite, soft and translucent, with a bright polish. A silver-tone bail caps its neck, and a fine silver-tone chain comes with it.
In four lines
A double gourd of nephrite, smooth and rounded.
A pale, translucent celadon green, with a bright polish.
A silver-tone bail and chain, alloy not specified.
No size to choose: a simple gift full of meaning.
A silhouette you recognise at first glance
This jade gourd takes the shape of the dried gourd once hung from a belt: two bulges, the smaller on top, the wider below, separated by a slim waist. All its beauty lies in its curves, which the polish lights up with a single reflection on each rounded body.
It is a motif China has carved in jade for centuries, and one of the most widespread, because it is simple and speaks to everyone. Jade motifs and their history.
A celadon green, soft and luminous
Here the nephrite is a very pale celadon green, between water green and pearl grey. It is translucent: light enters the stone and lights it from within, with faint milky veils that give it depth. It is a calm colour that goes with every skin tone and every outfit.
The bail and the chain
At the top, a polished silver-tone bail caps the neck of the gourd like a stopper, and hooks onto a fine round-link chain, also silver-tone. I do not know its alloy, so I do not state one. The light metal brings out the freshness of the green without warming it.
Nephrite, made to be touched
Nephrite is the tougher of the two stones called jade: its interwoven fibers absorb the small knocks of everyday life. With no edges and all curves, this gourd is a shape you quickly get into the habit of holding between your fingers. Jadeite or nephrite, what sets them apart, and hardness and toughness.
What to wear it with
Its pale green and silver-tone chain go with everything: a V-neck, a white shirt, a grey or navy jumper. It can be worn alone, as a discreet pendant, or with another fine chain for a layered look. With no size to choose, it is also a very easy gift to get right. Giving jade jewellery.
Wearing it, and keeping it beautiful
Take it off for the shower, the pool and sports: water and chlorine tarnish silver-tone metals. For the stone, lukewarm water, a mild soap and a soft cloth; for the chain, a dry cloth, avoiding the stone. Never ultrasonic cleaners, steam or solvents.Care in detail.
Additional information
Stone
Néphrite
Colour
Water green
Stone shape
Carving in the round
Motif
Gourd
Mounting
Chain
Metal
Silver tone, alloy not stated
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
What tradition attributes to the jade gourd
What follows shifts register, and I say so rather than blending it into the rest of the page. None of it is proven. These are customs and beliefs, old and documented, that I report because they are part of this stone’s history. No jewellery in this shop is sold as a remedy or a good luck charm, and I attribute no effect to this piece.
A stone of moral virtueIn Confucian thought, jade is associated with qualities of character rather than effects on the body: integrity, constancy, restraint. It is the best documented meaning of all.
The immortal’s gourdLi Tieguai, one of the Eight Immortals of Taoist tradition, is always shown with a gourd in hand. People saw it as the vessel for his remedies, and the gourd has remained linked to the idea of long life.
A name that sounds like a wishIn Chinese, the word for gourd is pronounced almost like two words meaning happiness and prosperity. It is this play on sounds, more than the shape, that made it a gift motif.
Many seedsA gourd is full of seeds, and tradition made it an image of many descendants. In the ancient wedding rite, the bride and groom each drank from one half of the same gourd.
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.
