Chinese dragon jade pendant: a rectangular plaque with rounded corners, the dragon carved in deep relief above a sea of waves. Knotted to a long strand of green and black beads.
It is the largest of the three dragon pieces in the catalogue, and the only one in full relief. The strand is long: it hangs low on the chest.
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 Chinese dragon jade pendant: a rectangular plaque with rounded corners, its whole face carrying a dragon carved in deep relief, body coiled, claws out, above a sea of waves. It is knotted to a long strand of green and black beads.
In four lines
A full rectangular plaque, the dragon carved in deep relief.
The sea of waves fills the whole lower part of the stone.
Long strand: it hangs low on the chest, not at the throat.
The record will be published: the plaque unties, so it weighs.
Three dragons in the shop, and they are not alike
This shop sells three dragon pendants, and it is worth saying so at once, so that nobody orders one thinking they are getting another. This one is a full rectangular plaque, the subject carved in deep relief over the whole face, and the strand is long.
The jade dragon pendant is a cut out piece, the dragon released from the mass rather than engraved inside a frame. The jade zodiac dragon pendant belongs to the set of twelve signs: smaller plaque, braided brown cord, red agate bead.
This is the largest of the three and the most worked. It is also the one you see from across a room, which is a quality or a drawback depending on what you are after.
A dragon in relief, not in engraving
The difference tells to the eye and to the hand. An engraved plaque carries a design cut below the surface: it stays smooth and catches little light. This one is carved in relief, the stone taken away around the subject, and the dragon’s body stands several millimetres above the ground.
The result is a piece that changes with the lighting: held flat it looks almost monochrome, tilted it digs shadows into the scales and under the claws. The back, by contrast, is smooth and polished, which makes it comfortable against the skin.
That work has a cost in material: a thicker stone is needed to release a relief. This is why the plaque weighs noticeably more than an engraved plaque of the same surface.
What the stone is, and what remains to be established
The green is deep, with lighter clouds and a few milky zones in the mass, which is common on nephrite. But colour proves nothing: what is sold under the name jade is very often serpentine or dyed quartzite.
On this reference the measurement is possible, since the knot undoes and the stone weighs bare. The figure will be published in the record, with its date, and it will say jadeite, nephrite, or something else.
Outside Burma, country of extraction not confirmed
What tradition attributes to the dragon 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 creature of water, not of fireThe Chinese dragon has almost nothing of the European one. It breathes no flame and guards no hoard: it commands the rain, the rivers and the sea. That is why waves fill the lower part of this plaque, and why the motif is so often tied to the harvest.
The number of clawsUnder the imperial dynasties the five clawed dragon was reserved for the emperor, four claws for princes, three for everyone else. Wearing a dragon was never a small thing, and the ban lasted for centuries. It fell with the empire.
The dragon and the phoenixPaired, they form the commonest couple in wedding iconography: the dragon for the husband, the phoenix for the wife. Alone, the dragon reads rather as an image of drive and authority.
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.
