Jade bagua pendant: an octagonal plaque, the yin and the yang engraved at the centre and the eight trigrams around it, one to each face. Knotted to a strand of green and black beads.
The eight figures are all different, none repeated: that is what separates a careful engraving from a copy. The octagon has the advantage of not spinning on its cord.
The beads of the strand are not announced as jade, and the page says so. The plaque unties, so it weighs: the record will be published. Why I write it down.
A jade bagua pendant: a regular octagonal plaque, the yin and the yang engraved at the centre, and the eight trigrams set around it, one to each face. The rim is picked out with a beaded fillet. It is knotted to a strand of green and black beads.
In four lines
A regular octagon, one trigram to each face, cut in hollow.
The yin and the yang at the centre, on a slightly domed disc.
Beaded fillet all round the rim, back smooth and polished.
The record will be published: the plaque unties, so it weighs.
What the eight signs really say
Each of the eight faces carries a trigram, that is a stack of three lines, solid or broken. Eight combinations are possible, and these are exactly the eight shown here: none repeated, none missing. That is a good mark of quality, because sloppy copies often repeat the same sign.
These trigrams come from the Yi Jing, the Book of Changes, a Chinese text compiled more than two thousand years ago. Each figure carries a name and a set of images: heaven, earth, water, fire, mountain, lake, thunder, wind.
The arrangement around the central disc is not decorative either: two traditional orders exist, the Earlier Heaven and the Later Heaven, and they do not place the same signs facing each other. My supplier does not say which one is engraved here, and I am not going to decide on his behalf.
An octagon, and why it wears well
The octagon has a practical advantage the disc does not: it does not spin. A pierced disc pivots at the end of its cord and always ends up showing its back. An eight sided plaque settles and stays the right way round, which matters when the face carries an oriented design.
The format is medium, distinctly wider than tall once at the neck, and the back is entirely smooth. The beaded fillet running round the rim softens the edge, so the stone does not catch on fabric.
What the stone is, and what remains to be established
The green is deep, almost bottle in the thick zones, and lightens markedly along the edges of the faces. That variation in thickness is good ground for observation: a stone that lightens where it is thin is translucent, which already rules out certain opaque materials.
That is not enough to conclude. What is sold under the name jade is very often serpentine or dyed quartzite, and only the density settles it without a laboratory. On this reference it is measurable, since the knot undoes.
Outside Burma, country of extraction not confirmed
What tradition attributes to the bagua 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 book before it was a signThe eight trigrams come from the Yi Jing, the Book of Changes, a divination manual that became one of the classics of Chinese thought. Confucius commented on it, and for two millennia it was read as a treatise on change far more than as a manual of fortune telling.
The mirror above the doorIn popular use the bagua is placed above an entrance, often with a small mirror at the centre. It is an object of thresholds, set on a building rather than worn. Its pendant version is recent and far more decorative.
Two halves that contain each otherThe central disc does not oppose black to white: each half carries a dot of the other colour, and the line between them is curved. The image says that nothing is pure or fixed, not that there is a good side and a bad one.
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.
