Water green jade earrings: a round cabochon in a very pale green, closed set in a silver tone ring continued by a scroll paved with small pale stones that rises to the hook. The stone is almost translucent and changes with the light.
In four lines
A round cabochon in a very pale water green, closed set.
A silver tone scroll paved with small pale stones up to the hook.
The stone is almost translucent: it changes with the daylight.
The record will stay empty: a closed setting forbids weighing.
A stone to look at against the light
Laid flat, this stone looks almost white, barely tinged with green. Held to the light it becomes frankly water green, and you see the brightness cross the cabochon right through as though through a frozen drop of water.
That behaviour has a name among Chinese connoisseurs: they speak of a stone that has water, that is to say a deep translucency rather than a simple surface transparency. It is the criterion that, ahead of colour, raises the price of a jadeite.
It proves nothing on its own, however: fine serpentine and certain chalcedonies behave in exactly the same way. The checks that need no equipment.
Why this page will carry no figure
The stone is held by a closed setting, a silver tone collar 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, so deform a mount whose scroll is paved and does not come back into shape cleanly. 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.
The scroll, and what it brings
The mount does not simply encircle the stone: it continues into a scroll that rises in a spiral to the hook, and that scroll is paved with small pale stones along its whole length.
The design has a practical consequence: the weight is spread over the whole height instead of being concentrated at the bottom, so the earring holds straight against the lobe rather than tipping forward. It is more comfortable than it looks.
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 water of a stoneChinese connoisseurs judge a jadeite on its shui, its water, that is to say the depth to which the light enters it. A pale but deep stone is worth more than a vivid, opaque one, and that hierarchy is old.
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.
The water green of scholarly tasteVery pale jades were long preferred to vivid greens in cultivated Chinese taste, where discretion counts more than brilliance. The fashion for intense green is recent, and largely commercial.
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.
