Fine jade necklace: a very light gilt chain carrying small oval jade beads in a sage green, spaced out and separated by tiny white beads. Long and supple.
A spacer necklace: ten times less stone than a full row, so almost no weight at the neck, and a chain that follows the skin instead of forming a rigid circle.
The beads do not all have the same tint, and that is good news: perfect uniformity would be suspect, not irregularity. Why I write it down.
A fine jade necklace: a very light gilt chain on which small oval jade beads in a sage green are mounted at regular intervals, separated by tiny white beads. It is long, supple, and almost without weight at the neck.
In four lines
Small oval sage green beads, spaced along a gilt chain.
Tiny white beads between them, not announced.
Long and very light: it is not felt at the neck.
The record will be published: a bead comes off the example ordered.
A spacer necklace, and why that changes everything
Most jade necklaces are full rows: the beads touch, the weight adds up, and the whole ends by being heavy. This one is a spacer necklace, where each bead is set between two links, separated from the next by several centimetres of chain.
The result holds in three things. It is light, because there is ten times less stone. It is supple, because the chain bends where a tight row stays stiff. And it follows the skin instead of forming a rigid circle, which makes it far more discreet under clothing.
Its counterpart is the relative fragility of the mounting: if a link gives way, a bead goes. It is not a piece to wear for odd jobs, and it is better taken off before pulling on a roll neck jumper. How to store a jade piece.
A sage green, not a shop window green
The beads are not a brilliant green. They turn towards sage, a soft grey green, slightly cloudy, and their tint varies from one bead to the next: some are almost beige, others frankly green.
That variation is good news, and I prefer to announce it rather than let it be discovered. On a natural stone, beads cut from different blocks cannot be identical. It is perfect uniformity that would be suspect, not irregularity.
The tiny white beads that separate them are not announced by my supplier: he writes neither cultured pearl, nor glass, nor mother of pearl. They therefore appear in the record as not announced, and I will not guess in his place.
What the weighing will be able to establish
The beads are mounted between two links, and a link opens with pliers without breaking anything. On the example I order, I will take one off, weigh it in air then suspended in water, and put it back. Never on a piece being sold.
A bead of this size is small, and the lighter a sample the noisier the measurement: it is one of the three limits of the method, and I flag it here because it applies in full. The method, with its three limits.
The gap between the candidates stays wide, however, serpentine around 2.6, quartzite around 2.65, nephrite from 2.90, so even an imperfect measurement will say something. The figure will be published in the record, with its date. What separates the two minerals, and all the necklaces in the section.
Additional information
Stone
Jadeite or nephrite, not resolved
Colour
Light green
Stone shape
Barrel beads
Motif
No motif
Mounting
Chain
Metal
Gold tone, alloy not stated
Setting
Drilled stone
Worn by
Women
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 jade
What follows changes register, and I flag it rather than blending it into the rest of the page. Nothing here is demonstrated. These are customs and beliefs, which I report because they are part of the history of this stone. No piece in this shop is sold as a remedy, and I claim no effect for this one.
The sound of the pendantsChinese scholars wore jades hung from the belt, whose chiming regulated their walk: too brisk a step made them knock together, a measured step let them sing. The sound of jade served as a call to order, and the rituals codified it.
Wearing little, and for a long timeThe old usage was not to accumulate: a single piece, kept for decades and often handed on, was worth more than a collection. It is a point on which Chinese tradition and contemporary jewellery do not say the same thing.
The green that does not shoutSoft, greyed greens were preferred by scholarly taste, for which the restraint of a stone was worth more than its brilliance. The fashion for saturated greens came with Burmese jadeite, only in the eighteenth century.
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.
Dispatched within 48 hours of your order being confirmed, for delivery within 14 days from dispatch. I keep no buffer stock, and I won’t promise a timeframe I couldn’t meet.
Postage charges
€6.99 to any destination, free on orders of €47 or more to France, Belgium, Switzerland and Luxembourg. The exact amount appears in the cart before you pay.
The packaging, and why it matters
Every piece ships in its own pouch, kept apart from the others. This isn’t about presentation: the hardness of jade is ordinary, between 6 and 6.5 for nephrite and 6.5 to 7 for jadeite, and the quartz in everyday dust sits at 7. Two pieces of jewellery that travel together end up scratching each other.
Fourteen days to change your mind
With no need to explain yourself. An email is enough to open a return, there is no form to fill in. Return postage is at your expense, unless the piece doesn’t match its listing or arrives damaged.
The wrong size is the main reason for a return in this category, and jade cannot be resized the way a solid metal band can. Two minutes of measuring almost always prevents it. The size guide.
Warm water, mild soap, a soft cloth. A very soft brush for the hollows of a carving. That’s all, and it’s enough.
What you must never do, and why
No ultrasonic cleaner, no steam, no solvent, no heat source. This isn’t a token precaution: the treatment status of my pieces is not established. My supplier doesn’t know, and weighing establishes the mineral without saying anything about a possible resin impregnation. Resin tolerates 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 hard to break: its interlocking crystal structure resists fracturing, and that is why axes could be shaped from it in the Neolithic. Its hardness, on the other hand, is ordinary, 6 to 6.5 for nephrite and 6.5 to 7 for jadeite. The quartz in everyday dust sits at 7: that is what dulls 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 the knocks against corners happen. 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. I’m French, from Morbihan, and based in Tallinn. I choose the pieces and have them set: I mine nothing, I cut nothing, and I don’t do the metalwork myself. The work I do is the sorting, and with this material that is what decides everything.
I am neither a gemmologist, nor a lapidary, nor a therapist, and I don’t claim to be.
I weigh, I don’t certify
Before putting a reference online, I order one example of it for myself. When it reaches me unset, 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 reference, not every piece. I don’t handle the piece that goes out to you, and I would rather say so than let you believe otherwise. The method, with its three limits.
What I can’t know
The treatment status of my pieces. My supplier doesn’t know, and the scales say nothing about it: they establish the mineral, not the resin impregnation. Only infrared spectroscopy in a laboratory would settle it, and I don’t have that done. So you will never read “jadeite A”, “type A” or “untreated” on this site. The information sheet.
Where my jade comes from
No Burmese jadeite, and the first reason is a legal one. Not the reason you read everywhere: the JADE Act of 2008 did indeed 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-owned company that controls the Burmese gem trade. So there is no general ban, but an American is not allowed to trade with that entity, and a stone never tells you where it has passed through. One single supply chain for ten markets: it has to hold up for the most demanding of them. When an origin isn’t confirmed to me in writing, the listing doesn’t state it. My sourcing policy.
