Jade bead earrings: one bead of green stone to each ear, drilled, held by a small silver tone ball and hung from a simple hook. Nothing else.
The two beads are not exactly the same tone, and that is good news: in a natural stone, perfect uniformity would be more suspect than the gap between them.
The bead comes off the hook, so it weighs: the record will be published. Why I write it down.
Jade bead earrings: one bead of green stone to each ear, drilled, held by a small silver tone ball and hung from a simple hook. Nothing else. It is the plainest pair in the shop, and the least expensive piece in the whole catalogue.
In four lines
One bead of green stone to each ear, and nothing else.
Simple silver tone hook, small stopper ball under the bead.
The lightest pair in the shop: you do not feel it.
The record will be published: the bead comes off, so it weighs.
Nothing to explain, and that is the point
No carved subject, no deity, no sign, no pave. A bead of stone at the end of a hook. It is the simplest thing a jade shop can make, and that is exactly what makes it a good first purchase.
A bare stone hides nothing: there is no mount to mask a chipped edge, no setting to cover an uneven tone. What you see in the photograph is all there is.
It is also the easiest pair in the catalogue to give, together with the jade bar earrings: no question of size, no motif to interpret, no risk of picking the wrong symbol.
A green that varies from one bead to the other
Look at the two beads in the photograph: they are not exactly the same tone. One is a little denser, the other milkier, and both show lighter zones where the light passes through.
That difference is good news, and I would rather announce it than let it be discovered. Two beads cut from different blocks cannot be identical in a natural stone. Perfect uniformity would be the suspect thing, not the discrepancy.
If the idea of a mismatched pair bothers you, that is a reason to choose a single cabochon piece instead of this one. How to judge the quality of a jade.
What the weighing will establish
The bead is threaded on a wire looped around the hook. You open the loop with pliers, the bead comes out, and you close it again. I will do that on the example I order, never on a piece that is sold.
A bead this size is small, and the lighter the sample the noisier the measurement: that is one of the three limits of the method, and it applies fully here. The method, with its three limits.
The gap between the candidates stays wide, serpentine around 2.6, quartzite around 2.65, nephrite from 2.90, so even an imperfect measurement will say something. The figure will be published with its date. What separates the two minerals, and all the earrings in the shop.
Additional information
Stone
Jadeite or nephrite, not resolved
Colour
Light green
Stone shape
Round beads
Motif
No motif
Mounting
Ear wire
Metal
Silver tone, alloy not stated
Setting
Drilled stone
Worn by
Women
Mineral family
Calcic amphibole, Sodium aluminium pyroxene
Hardness (Mohs)
6 to 7
Reference density
2.90 to 3.36 g/cm³
Toughness
Exceptional, interlocking crystals
Treatment
Not determined
Origin
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.
Jade at the earsThe jueshi, slit jade rings worn at the ear, are among the oldest Chinese jewels known: they turn up in Neolithic burials, long before the discs and the belt pendants.
What you do not seeIn the scholar's taste, a jade without decoration was worth more than a carved one: the quality of the material had to be enough. The plainest pieces were often the dearest, and a bare object leaves nothing to hide behind.
The round bead, an exerciseCutting a regular sphere in a stone as tough as nephrite takes longer than cutting a plaque: the material has to be worn away in every direction. Beads are not a cut rate shape.
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.
