Vintage jade earrings: a drop of stone in a deep bottle green, closed set in a silver tone frame entirely chased with scrolls and arabesques, hung from a simple hook. It is the darkest and most worked piece in the section.
In four lines
A drop in a deep bottle green, closed set.
A silver tone frame chased with scrolls over its whole surface.
Sold under reserve: the type colour of dyed chalcedony.
The record will stay empty: a closed setting forbids weighing.
A green that has to be looked at squarely
This stone is a dense, vitreous bottle green, and absolutely even: not a vein, not a cloud, not a paler zone on the edge where it nevertheless thins. On a cabochon of this size that is very unusual for a jade.
Nephrite is made of interlocked fibres whose density varies, and that variation always shows a little. Jadeite of a green as deep and as regular exists, but it sells at quite another price than the one on this page. What gives exactly this look is a dyed chalcedony, a material that takes colour homogeneously because its grain is fine and even.
I am not saying it is certain. I am saying that is what my supplier’s photograph shows, not only my own rendering, and that a shop selling one stone only has no right to pass over it. The names that do not denote jade.
And why the reserve will stay open
On most pages in this catalogue a reservation about the material is lifted by the weighing: the figure arrives, it settles the matter, and the page is corrected. Here it will not be. The drop is held by a silver tone collar folded down over its whole edge, and taking it out would deform a chased frame that does not come back into shape.
I am not going to destroy a piece to obtain a measurement. The record will therefore stay empty, and it will say so: not measured yet, and it will not be on this reference.
If certainty matters to you, the catalogue has plenty to offer. The discs on cords and the knotted pendants all come undone, so they can all be weighed. The method, with its three limits.
What you are buying all the same
Work on the mount. The frame is not a simple surround: it is chased with scrolls over its whole surface, including the edge, and the back is worked too. It is a style called vintage or Balinese, very recognisable, and it takes up as much room as the stone.
The whole is surprisingly light for its appearance, because the frame is hollow. It is worn all day without pulling on the lobe, which is not obvious on a drop of this size.
The metal is silver tone, not hallmarked by my supplier. So I write it as silver tone, and not 925. A patina will come in the bottom of the chasing, and that is all to the good: on this style it is the patina that gives the relief. How to clean jade, and all the earrings in the section.
Additional information
Stone
Jadeite or nephrite, not resolved
Colour
Dark green
Stone shape
Drop
Motif
No motif
Mounting
Metal setting
Metal
Silver tone, alloy not stated
Setting
Bezel set
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 known Chinese ornaments: examples are found in Neolithic burials, long before the discs and the belt pendants.
Deep 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.
Dyeing a stone is nothing newThe dyeing of translucent 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.
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.
