Jade Lily of the Valley Earrings, Carved in Volume
40,90 €
Lily of the valley jade earrings: a small bell with turned back petals, carved in the round from a tender green stone, under a gilt cup and a small white bead.
The flower is hollowed from underneath and its six points are turned back one by one. On a stone a centimetre across, that is goldsmith’s work.
Lily of the valley is a European flower, not a Chinese one, and the page says so rather than invent an origin for it. Why I write it down.
Lily of the valley jade earrings: a small bell with turned back petals, carved in the round from a tender green stone, under a chased gilt cup and a small white bead. The whole fits within a centimetre and swings at the end of a fine hook.
In four lines
A lily of the valley bell carved in the round, petals turned back.
A chased gilt cup and a small white bead above.
Very small: the whole fits within a centimetre.
The record will be published: the bell comes off, so it can be weighed.
A flower that is not Chinese
Better to say it on a jade shop: lily of the valley does not belong to the Chinese floral repertoire, which turns around plum, lotus, peony and chrysanthemum. It is a European flower, and its association with the first of May comes from France.
It arrived in Asian jewellery through fashion, in the twentieth century, and it settled there because its shape suits an earring perfectly: a hanging bell is a ready made pendant.
That takes nothing away from the piece. It only changes what can be said about it: it is a charming object, legible everywhere, not an inheritance. The motifs most often found on these stones.
Work in very little material
The bell is hollowed from underneath and its six points are turned back one by one towards the outside, as on a real open flower. On a stone that fits within a centimetre, that is goldsmith’s work: the inside has to be hollowed out without piercing the wall.
Jade lends itself to this exercise better than most stones, and it is not a question of hardness but of toughness: its interlocked fibrous structure resists breaking, where a quartz of the same hardness would shatter under the tool.
A small stone, and what that costs the measurement
The bell comes off its post, so the weighing is possible. But it is small, and the lighter a sample the noisier the measurement: it is one of the three limits of the method, and it applies in full here. I flag it rather than publish a figure as though it were clean.
The gap between the candidates fortunately stays wide: serpentine runs around 2.6, quartzite around 2.65, and nephrite starts at 2.90. Even imperfect, the measurement will say something.
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.
A motif from elsewhereLily of the valley does not belong to the classical Chinese floral repertoire. It arrived in Asian jewellery through twentieth century fashion, and its bell shape took hold because it suits a hanging earring.
The first of MayThe custom of giving lily of the valley on the first day of May is French, and it is traced back to the Renaissance. It has no Chinese equivalent, where the calendar of flowers follows the lunar seasons.
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.
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.
