Jade clover pendant: four green cabochons cut as hearts, claw set in a silver tone mount around a small clear stone. Very fine snake chain.
Sold under reserve on the stone. The green is bright and perfectly even from one petal to the next, which is the behaviour of a colour that entered a porous rock.
If a heart comes out without forcing, I weigh it and publish the figure. Otherwise the record will stay empty, and it will say so. Why I write it down.
A jade clover pendant: four green cabochons cut as hearts, claw set in a silver tone mount and arranged in a cross around a small clear stone. A curved stem runs down below the flower. It hangs short, on a very fine snake chain.
In four lines
Four green cabochons cut as hearts, claw set in a cross.
A small clear stone at the centre, not announced by my supplier.
Sold under reserve: the colour is that of dyed quartzite.
The record will stay empty if no heart comes out without forcing.
A colour that behaves like a dye
The green of these four hearts is bright, deep, and perfectly even from one petal to the next. That is what an added colour gives in a porous stone, and it is exactly the signature of dyed quartzite, the granular rock that circulates by the tonne under the name jade.
The mechanism is no mystery: a quartzite is made of welded grains, with joints between them. A bath of hot colourant lodges there, fills the joints, and comes out as an even tint that natural jade almost never reaches. On a nephrite the fibres are too tight for the bath to penetrate in the same way.
I say it here rather than leave it to be guessed, and I say it of my supplier’s photograph as much as of mine. The names that do not denote jade.
What the weighing will be able to do, and what it will not
The four hearts are held by claws lifted over their edges. If one lifts without forcing on the example I order, I will take the cabochon out and weigh it: quartzite sits around 2.65, nephrite starts at 2.90, and the figure will settle it.
If none gives, I will not insist: I am not going to break a mount for a measurement, and the record will stay empty and say so. The method, with its three limits.
And in every case, the weighing will say nothing about dyeing. It establishes the mineral, not what has been put into it: a dyed quartzite and a bare quartzite weigh the same. Only a laboratory analysis would separate the two, and I do not have it done. The treatment information sheet.
The four leaf clover is not Chinese either
To be complete: this motif has nothing to do with the tradition of jade. The four leaf clover is a European charm, attested in the British Isles and in Ireland, where the rarity of the fourth leaflet is the whole point.
It settled into world jewellery in the twentieth century, and it is now made in every material, jade included. It is a piece of mounting, not a piece of cutting: the work is on the metal side, the stone only supplies the colour.
The metal is silver tone, not hallmarked by my supplier. So I write it that way, and not 925. The chain is a very fine snake mesh, comfortable but fragile at a kink: avoid storing it loose. How to store a jade piece, and all the pendants in the shop.
Additional information
Stone
Jadeite or nephrite, not resolved
Colour
Bright green
Stone shape
Cabochon
Motif
Clover
Mounting
Metal setting
Metal
Silver tone, alloy not stated
Setting
Claw set
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 the clover 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.
A matter of statisticsCommon clover has three leaflets. The fourth is a growth anomaly, estimated at one stem in several thousand. All the power lent to it rests on that rarity, and on nothing else: it is the most frankly arithmetical charm there is.
A European motifThe clover comes from the British Isles and Ireland, where the three leaf shamrock serves as a national emblem. The fourth leaf carries, in an often quoted English formula, hope, faith, love and luck. Nothing Chinese about it.
What jade brings to the motifNothing traditional: it is a recent meeting, born of industrial jewellery, which applied a Western motif to an Asian stone. The object is likeable, and it claims no antiquity.
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.
