Jade flower pendant: a five lobed plum blossom cut from a single pale green stone, pierced at the centre. A fine gold tone chain passes through the hole, with no bail.
The stone carries white patches that I have neither retouched nor cropped out. They are inclusions, and on a nephrite they argue for an untreated stone.
Nothing holds the flower to the chain: it comes off, so it weighs. The record will be published. Why I write it down.
A jade flower pendant: a five lobed plum blossom, cut from a single pale green stone and pierced with a wide hole at its centre. A fine gold tone chain passes straight through the hole, with no bail. The piece is small and sits in the pad of a finger.
In four lines
A five lobed plum blossom, cut from a single stone.
Wide central hole: the chain passes through it, no bail, no glue.
Pale green with white patches in the mass, which I do not hide.
The record will be published: the stone comes off, so it weighs.
The white patches, and why they stay
The stone carries several opaque white patches, clearly visible in the gallery photographs, particularly on the lower lobe. I have neither retouched them nor cropped them out, because an arranged photograph is paid for when the parcel is opened.
They are inclusions, that is zones where the stone crystallised differently: more coarsely, so more opaquely. On a nephrite these white areas are common and they are a sign of an untreated stone, since a resin impregnation would tend to even them out.
They please or they do not, and that is a matter of taste, not of quality. What would be dishonest is to let them be discovered when the parcel is opened. How to judge the quality of a jade.
A hole that serves as a bail
The flower is pierced at the centre with a wide hole, and the chain passes straight through it. There is no ring, no bail, no spot of glue, so nothing that can give way or tarnish next to the stone. It is the simplest mounting there is, and the most durable.
It has a pleasant consequence: the flower slides and pivots freely on the chain. It does not lock into one position, it recentres itself, and it shows each of its two faces in turn, which are worked alike.
It also has a counterpart: the stone rubs on the chain at every movement. Jade is very tough, so it is not the stone that will wear, it is the metal. On a gold tone chain whose alloy is not specified, that means a plating that will eventually mark at the point of contact. The thread and the cord of a jade piece.
What the stone is, and what remains to be established
The green is pale and milky, and the stone stays translucent along its thin edges. On a pale stone the weighing calls for more caution than on a deep green: dolomitic marble, sold under the name white jade, reaches 2.85 while nephrite starts at 2.90.
Serpentine, for its part, stays around 2.6 and quartzite around 2.65, so those two separate out without difficulty. On this reference the measurement is possible, since the flower comes off the chain and weighs bare.
Outside Burma, country of extraction not confirmed
What tradition attributes to the plum blossom 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.
The flower that opens in the snowThe plum tree flowers at the end of winter, on bare wood, often before the thaw. That is where its whole meaning in China comes from: it figures tenacity, the capacity to hold on and to start again when nothing invites it. The motif is everywhere in scholarly painting.
The three friends of winterPlum, pine and bamboo form a trio found together on screens, porcelain and jewellery. Three plants that cross the bad season, read as three ways of not giving in.
Five petals, five blessingsThe five lobes of the flower are brought close to the five blessings of the traditional wish: long life, wealth, health, virtue and a peaceful end. The connection is late and rests on the number, not on botany.
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.
