Vivid green jade earrings: two large balls of a frank green mottled with white, drilled and hung from gilt clip hoops. The deepest colour in the catalogue.
Sold under reserve on the stone. The white patches stop short instead of melting in, and that is the pattern of a colourant on a grainy rock, not of a colour of formation.
The balls come off, so the mineral will be settled. But dyeing cannot be weighed. Why I write it down.
Vivid green jade earrings: two large balls of a frank green mottled with white, drilled and hung from gilt clip hoops. It is the deepest colour in the whole catalogue, and the dearest pair in the section.
In four lines
Two large balls of a frank green, mottled with white.
Gilt clip hoops: they go on with one hand.
Sold under reserve: the colour is that of dyed quartzite.
The record will be published: the ball comes off, so it can be weighed.
The frankest colour in the catalogue, and that is what should alert you
These balls are a brilliant green, far deeper than anything else in the section, and crossed by milky white patches with sharp edges. The effect is spectacular in a photograph, and that is precisely why it has to be looked at closely.
On a nephrite the passage from green to white is gradual, because the colour follows the density of the fibres and that varies slowly. Here the patches stop short and draw streaks: that is what a colourant gives when it meets a less porous zone of a grainy rock. Dyed quartzite is often recognised by that pattern.
There is a second argument, and it is economic. A natural jadeite of that green, at this size, does not sell at the price of this page, nor at a tenth of it. I am not saying it is certain, I am saying that is what my supplier’s photograph shows and that I have no right to keep quiet about it. The names that do not denote jade.
What the weighing will be able to do, and what it will not
Good news on one point: unlike the closed set cabochons in the section, these balls come off. They are threaded on a looped post under the hoop, so they come out with pliers without breaking anything, and they are large enough to give a measurement with little noise.
The figure will therefore settle the mineral: quartzite runs around 2.65, nephrite starts at 2.90, jadeite at 3.25. There is no grey zone between those values, and the result will be readable without interpretation.
But it will say nothing about dyeing. A dyed quartzite and a bare quartzite weigh exactly the same: the scale establishes the mineral, not what has been put into it. Only a laboratory analysis would separate the two, and I do not have that done. The treatment information sheet.
What you are buying all the same
Two large, well rounded balls, mirror polished, and a clip hoop that goes on with one hand without hunting for the hole. The volume is the most generous in the section, and the pair is seen from a distance, which is exactly what is asked of it.
The weight stays reasonable because the ring is hollow, but these balls weigh more than any others in the catalogue: if your lobes are fragile, look rather at the studs or the small beads in the section.
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.
Vivid green, a recent fashionThe taste for very saturated greens comes from the trade in Burmese jadeite, which only reaches China in the eighteenth century. Old scholarly taste far preferred pale and muted stones, and judged brilliance a little vulgar.
Dyeing a stone is nothing newThe dyeing of porous stones is attested since antiquity, from Roman agate to the chalcedonies of Idar Oberstein. It is not a modern fraud, it is an old trade, which becomes a problem only when the process is kept quiet.
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.
