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.
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.
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.
