Carved jade pendant: a tall, irregular stone, a bunch of grapes and its foliage cut berry by berry over the whole face. Knotted to a strand of green and black beads.
The outline follows the shape of the block rather than a geometric cut: no two pieces are identical, and the one you receive will resemble the photograph without tracing it.
The beads of the strand are not announced as jade, and the page says so. The stone unties, so it weighs: the record will be published. Why I write it down.
A carved jade pendant: a tall, irregular stone whose whole face carries a bunch of grapes and its foliage, berry by berry, cut in relief right to the edge of the mass. It is knotted to a strand of green and black beads.
In four lines
A bunch of grapes cut berry by berry, in full relief.
Foliage and vine shoot taken up around it, to the edge of the stone.
Free form, not geometric: no two pieces are identical.
The record will be published: the stone unties, so it weighs.
A stone that was not straightened out
Most pendants start with a geometric cut: a disc, an oval, a rectangle. This one starts from the block. The outline follows the raw shape of the stone, tall, with one flank wider than the other and a base ending in a rounded point.
That choice has a direct consequence: two examples cannot be strictly identical. The bunch is always there, the leaves too, but their place on the stone follows what the block allowed. The piece you receive will resemble the photograph without tracing it.
That is the kind of detail a page should state before the order, not after. A pierced disc, by contrast, reproduces identically without difficulty, and that is another way of buying.
Grapes, a motif of number
The bunch is worked berry by berry, each one released as a half sphere, and the shoots curl between the leaves. The relief is deep: in places the stone is pierced right through between two stems, which calls for a tough material that will not break at the drill.
In Chinese iconography, grapes are a motif of number and descent: many fruits on a single stem, many children in a single house. It is often carved with a squirrel, which doubles the meaning, and alone it keeps the same reading.
The motif is less expected than the dragon or the buddha, which makes it a good choice for anyone who does not want the jade pendant everybody recognises. The motifs most often found on these stones.
What the stone is, and what remains to be established
The green is medium, a little milky, and lightens markedly in the thinnest parts of the foliage. That contrast between thick and thin zones is exactly what one looks at to judge the translucency of a stone, and it reads very clearly here.
It settles nothing, though. What is sold under the name jade is very often serpentine or dyed quartzite, and only the density separates these materials without a laboratory. On this reference it is measurable, since the knot undoes.
Outside Burma, country of extraction not confirmed
What tradition attributes to grapes 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.
Many fruits on one stemGrapes read as an image of numerous descent: a single bunch carries dozens of berries. They were readily given to a young couple, and the motif returns on wedding caskets as on belt plaques.
The squirrel and the vineGrapes are often carved with a small squirrel, because the word that names it enters an expression of fertility. The two motifs together form one of the commonest pairs in Qing carving. Here the vine stands alone.
A plant from far awayThe vine is not native to China: it arrived by the western routes under the Han. The motif long kept a flavour of elsewhere, and it appears on luxury objects well before it appears in the fields.
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.
