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.
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.
