Lucky charm jade necklace: a fine grained silver tone chain carrying three charms, a horseshoe set with pale stones, a green jade bead and an engraved tag. Adjustable length.
The jade, here, is one bead. The other two charms and the chain are metal, and I say so before the purchase rather than after. The photograph is to the scale of a hand.
The horseshoe is European, jade is Chinese, and nothing links them: it is a contemporary assembly. Why I write it down.
A lucky charm jade necklace: a fine grained silver tone chain carrying three charms side by side, a horseshoe set with small pale stones, a flattened green jade bead, and an engraved rectangular tag. The length is set by a chain extender at the back.
In four lines
Three charms side by side: horseshoe, jade bead, tag.
Fine grained silver tone chain, lobster clasp and adjusting extender.
Only one of the three charms is stone, and the page says so.
The record will be published: the bead opens off the thread without damage.
What you are buying, and what you are not
Better to say it at once. On this reference, the jade is a bead about a centimetre across, flattened like a small disc, and it shares the chain with two metal charms. This is not a stone piece, it is a charm necklace one of whose charms is stone.
I flag it because the shop sells one material only, and because someone who came looking for jade could be disappointed on opening the parcel. The gallery photograph is to the scale of a hand, deliberately, so that the proportion is readable before buying.
That said, the piece claims nothing else. Its subject is the assembly: three different objects that chime together, and a green that stands out against two silvers.
The horseshoe, and the sense of the assembly
The horseshoe is a European lucky charm, with no connection at all to the Chinese tradition of jade. It has been called lucky since the Middle Ages, for reasons to do with iron, the horse and the crescent shape, and the question of whether to hang it points up or points down has never been settled.
Here it is set with a row of small pale stones, cut as baguettes, which my supplier does not name. So I will not call them diamonds or zircons: the record writes them as not announced, and that is all I can say about them.
The chain closes with a lobster clasp and continues into an adjusting extender ending in a small disc. You choose the link to hook the clasp into, and the length changes by several centimetres. Nothing to measure before ordering.
That is a real advantage for a gift: unlike a ring, this necklace cannot come out the wrong size. And unlike a knotted cord, it goes on and off with one hand.
The metal is silver tone, not hallmarked by my supplier. So I write it as silver tone, and not 925: a hallmark is information, and I do not invent it. Giving a jade piece, and all the necklaces in the section.
Additional information
Stone
Jadeite or nephrite, not resolved
Colour
Light green
Stone shape
Pierced disc
Motif
Horseshoe
Mounting
Chain
Metal
Silver 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 the horseshoe and 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.
Iron, the horse and the crescentThree reasons cross in this European lucky charm: wrought iron, said to ward off evil spirits, the value of the horse in a farming society, and the crescent shape found in many other amulets of the Mediterranean.
Points up or points downThe quarrel has never been settled. Some say a shoe open upwards holds luck like a cup, others that open downwards it pours it over whoever passes beneath. Both usages coexist from region to region.
Two traditions on one threadThe horseshoe is European, jade is Chinese, and nothing links them historically. This necklace is a contemporary object that assembles two lucky charms from two worlds, and no common origin should be looked for.
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.
