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.
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.
