Jade medallion pendant: a pierced green disc capped with a gold tone piece shaped as spread wings, from which a small openwork subject descends into the hole.
The cap comes off: the stone can be worn bare on a cord if the gold tone stops pleasing. Few mounted jewels allow that.
Sold under reserve on the stone: the bright green with sharp white patches is that of dyed quartzite, and the page explains why. Why I write it down.
A jade medallion pendant: a pierced green disc, capped with a gold tone piece shaped as spread wings from which a small openwork subject descends to the centre of the hole. The bail is caught in the cap, and the chain is fine.
In four lines
A pierced disc capped with gold tone wings and an openwork subject.
The subject reaches down to the centre of the hole without blocking it.
Sold under reserve: the colour is that of dyed quartzite.
The record will stay empty if the cap does not come off without forcing.
A stock disc, and an interchangeable cap
Let us be frank: this jewel is an assembly of two pieces made separately. A standard pierced disc, of the kind produced by the thousand, and a metal cap that grips it from above. Neither was made for the other.
You can see it: the cap does not exactly follow the curve of the disc, and the subject hanging in the hole is not centred to the millimetre. That is not a fault of this example, it is the nature of the assembly, and no two pieces will ever fall quite alike.
The advantage is real: the cap comes off, so the stone can be worn bare on a plain cord if the metal stops pleasing, or if it tarnishes. Few mounted jewels allow that. The same disc exists in the shop under a silver tone cap: the jade phoenix pendant.
White clouds with edges too sharp
The disc is a bright green crossed by milky white patches, and it is the boundary between the two that has to be looked at. On a nephrite the passage from green to white is gradual, because the colour follows the density of the fibres.
Here the patches have sharp, almost cut edges, and they draw streaks rather than clouds. That is what a colourant gives when it stops at a less porous zone of a granular rock, and dyed quartzite is often recognised by that very pattern.
The weighing will be able to settle the mineral, if the cap comes off without forcing: quartzite sits around 2.65, nephrite starts at 2.90. It will never say anything about the dyeing, which weighs nothing. The treatment information sheet, and the names that do not denote jade.
A gold tone that asks two precautions
The metal is gold tone, not hallmarked by my supplier. So I write it as gold tone, and not gold plated: a plating is a thickness, so a figure, and I do not invent it.
Two precautions are enough. First: do not rub the cap with an abrasive cloth, because a plating goes first from the high points of the relief, exactly where you press. Second: take it off before cleaning the stone, since it does come off.
Outside Burma, country of extraction not confirmed
What tradition attributes to the disc 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 oldest shape of allThe pierced disc, the bi, comes out of Neolithic tombs more than five thousand years old. Its exact function is still debated by the archaeologists themselves, and any confident reading of what it meant should be taken with caution.
A hole that is not a lackThe empty centre is part of the design, and several Chinese commentaries see in it an image of what connects rather than of what is missing. It is a late reading, and it is worth what late readings are worth.
The cap is modernCapping an old disc with a metal ornament is a habit of contemporary jewellery, not a traditional practise. Ancient discs were worn bare, hung from a cord passed through the hole.
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.
