Jade bell flower earrings: a small bell shaped flower carved in the round from a translucent white stone, capped with a silver tone cup and topped by a green bead.
The calyx is hollowed from underneath and the petals are released one by one: it is the most finely cut piece in the section, and the lightest to wear.
The bell and the bead are not the same tint, and the page does not deduce that it is the same stone. Why I write it down.
Jade bell flower earrings: a small bell shaped flower, carved in the round from a translucent white stone, capped with a chased silver tone cup and topped by a green bead. The whole hangs from a simple hook and moves at every step.
In four lines
A flower as a bell carved in the round, in a white stone.
A chased silver tone cup and a green bead above.
Two different stones on the same earring, and the page says so.
The record will be published, with an observation of grain as well as the figure.
A carving, not a cut out
The bell is worked in the round: the calyx is hollowed from underneath, the petals are released one from another and their edges curl slightly outward. This is not a plate cut into the silhouette of a flower, it is a small sculpture in the round.
At this size the work is delicate: the inside has to be hollowed out without piercing the wall, and on a stone as tough as nephrite that is done by abrasion, not by cutting. It is the most finely cut piece in the earring section.
The hollow also has a consequence for the weight: the flower is far lighter than a solid stone of the same volume, and the pair is worn without pulling. Why a carving this fine stands the shock.
Two stones, and two colours
The bell is white, translucent, barely tinged with green on the thin edges. The bead above it is a frank and clearly deeper green. These are not the same tints, and it would be surprising if it were the same stone.
My supplier announces only one word for both, and I am not going to deduce from that that they are the same material. The record therefore carries the green bead on its own line, as an element whose material is not established.
A white, and why the weighing is more delicate here
On a deep green, density separates cleanly: serpentine around 2.6, quartzite around 2.65, nephrite from 2.90. On a white a fourth candidate invites itself in: dolomitic marble, sold under the name of white jade, which reaches 2.85.
2.85 against 2.90, the margin is too thin to conclude on the figure alone. What you look at then is the grain in grazing light: a marble shows crystalline patches that sparkle in facets, a nephrite shows an even fibrous felting.
Outside Burma, country of extraction not confirmed
What tradition attributes to the flower 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.
Mutton fat whiteOld Chinese taste placed at the summit the white nephrites taken from Xinjiang, called mutton fat for their greasy, dense look. The hierarchy reversed in the eighteenth century with the arrival of the green jadeites from Burma.
Bell shaped flowersLily of the valley and campanulas do not belong to the classical Chinese repertoire, which prefers plum, lotus and peony. This shape comes from Western jewellery, and it is recent in jade.
Jade at the earsThe jueshi, slit jade rings worn at the ear, are among the oldest known Chinese ornaments: examples are found in Neolithic burials, long before the discs and the belt pendants.
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.
