Jade cabochon earrings: an oval of grey green stone, domed and polished without a facet, closed set in a gilt frame with a brushed matt finish, hung from a rounded stud. The drawing is clean, with no ornament at all, and the stone takes up everything.
In four lines
An oval grey green cabochon, domed and polished without a facet.
A gilt frame with a brushed matt finish, not shiny.
No ornament, no pave: the stone takes up everything.
The record will stay empty: a closed setting forbids weighing.
A matt gold tone, and that is a choice
The frame is not mirror polished as on most gilt jewellery: it is brushed, that is to say scored with microscopic striations in one direction, which diffuses the light instead of returning it in a block. The result is a muted, almost buttery gold.
That finish has two consequences. The first is aesthetic: it brings the look of the metal close to that of the stone, which is matt too, and the whole appears of one piece instead of splitting in two. A shiny frame around a matt cabochon would have crushed the stone.
The second is practical: a brushed finish masks the micro scratches of use, where a mirror polish shows them all. It is the finish that ages best on a piece worn every day. How to store a jade piece.
Why this page will carry no figure
The stone is held by a closed setting, a collar of metal folded down over the whole edge of the cabochon. It is the setting that best protects a domed stone, and it is also the one that makes it impossible to take out.
To weigh it you would have to open the collar along its whole length, so deform a frame whose brushed finish cannot be made good once marked. I am not going to damage a piece to obtain a figure, and I prefer to write that limit rather than pass over it in silence.
The Mineral line of the record will therefore say what my supplier announces, and nothing more. If certainty matters to you, the beads and the bars in the section all come off, so they can all be weighed. The method, with its three limits.
What the stone shows all the same
The green is dull, a little grey, far from the brilliant greens of the section, and it is not uniform: one half of the cabochon is milkier than the other, with a gradual passage between the two. That soft gradation is the behaviour of a colour of formation, not of a dye bath that stops short.
The surface also shows, in grazing light, a fine shimmer in one direction, like fibres laid flat. That felting is characteristic of nephrite, whose structure is made of interlocked needles. It is a serious sign, and it deserves flagging, without being a proof.
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 cabochon, an old cutDoming and polishing a stone without faceting it is the oldest way of cutting one, and it is the only one that suits jade: its fibrous structure does not return the light like a transparent crystal, so a facet would serve no purpose.
The dull green of old tastePale, greyed greens were preferred by Chinese scholars, for whom the restraint of a stone was worth more than its brilliance. The present taste for saturated greens comes from the jadeite trade, and it is recent.
What you do not seeIn scholarly taste a jade without decoration was worth more than an ornamented one: the quality of the material had to be enough. The plainest pieces were often the dearest, and a bare object leaves nothing to hide behind.
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.
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.
