Jade and mother of pearl pendant: a pierced green disc crossed at an angle by a leafy silver tone branch, with a white shell flower set on it. The bail takes a fine chain.
Three materials, and only one is jade. Mother of pearl is soft and fears perfume: that is the only precaution that matters on this piece.
The branch is riveted through the hole, so the record will stay empty: I will not damage the piece to get a figure. Why I write it down.
A jade and mother of pearl pendant: a pierced green disc, crossed at an angle by a leafy silver tone branch on which sits a white shell flower with a small clear stone at its heart. The bail is wide and takes a fine chain.
In four lines
A pierced jade disc, crossed by a leafy silver tone branch.
A mother of pearl flower, which is not jade, set on the branch.
A small clear stone at the heart of the flower, not announced.
The record will stay empty: the branch is riveted, the stone will not come out.
Three materials, and I name them all
In a shop that sells only one stone, a composite piece has to be taken apart. The green disc is the jade. The white flower is mother of pearl, that is the inner layer of a shell, an organic material of animal origin and not a mineral. And the small bright chip at its heart is a clear stone my supplier does not name.
All three are in the record, each on its line. A page that said only jade pendant would be false by omission: the mother of pearl occupies the centre of the eye, and it is what you see first.
Mother of pearl has constraints of its own, and they are not those of jade. It is soft, it scratches with a fingernail, and it takes badly to perfume and household products. Do not spray anything onto it, that is the only precaution that matters on this piece.
Why this page will carry no figure
The silver tone branch does not sit on the disc: it passes through the central hole and is riveted on both sides. It is a solid assembly, far better than a glued one, and it has a direct counterpart: the stone will not come out.
To weigh it you would have to open the rivet, so deform the branch, and that cannot be put right cleanly on an openwork piece. I am not going to damage a piece of jewellery to get a figure: the Mineral line will say what my supplier announces, and nothing more.
Other pendants in the shop weigh without difficulty because the stone is bare. The pale green jade disc is one, and its record will be published.
A disc that does not wear like the others
The branch changes the look of the disc completely. Set at an angle, it breaks the symmetry and pulls the eye towards the flower rather than towards the central hole, which gives a far more decorative piece than a plain bi.
It also changes the way the jewel hangs: the bail is at the top of the branch, not at the edge of the disc, so the stone lies flat against the chest instead of pivoting on its thread. That is more comfortable, and more legible from a distance.
The metal is silver tone, not hallmarked by my supplier. So I write it as silver tone, and not 925: a hallmark is information, and I do not invent it. As for the word jade on its own, it says little: what is sold under that name is very often serpentine or dyed quartzite. None of those names denotes jade.All the pendants in the shop, and what separates the two minerals.
Additional information
Stone
Jadeite or nephrite, not resolved
Colour
Clear green
Stone shape
Pierced disc
Motif
Flower
Mounting
Metal setting
Metal
Silver tone, alloy not stated
Setting
Drilled stone
Worn by
Women
Mineral family
Calcic amphibole, Sodium aluminium pyroxene
Hardness (Mohs)
6 to 7
Reference density
2.90 to 3.36 g/cm³
Toughness
Exceptional, interlocking crystals
Treatment
Not determined
Origin
Outside Burma, country of extraction not confirmed
What tradition attributes to mother of pearl 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.
Two materials of rankJade and mother of pearl long travelled together in Chinese furniture and scholars' objects, where mother of pearl inlaid in lacquered wood was the pale counterpart of the green stones. The pairing is not accidental, it comes from cabinetmaking.
The flower and the discSetting a flower on a pierced disc amounts to laying two old images over each other: the oldest form of Chinese jade, and the most ordinary motif of plenty in ornament. The result is modern and claims no antiquity.
What mother of pearl asksBeing organic, mother of pearl fears acid, alcohol and perfume, which dull it for good. That is a material fact, not a belief, and it is the only thing on this page worth remembering.
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.
