Carved jade ring: a wide band, cut from one block, worked in relief all the way round. A maned creature coils across it.
I do not give it a name. Dragon, qilin and pixiu look too much alike at this size, and a false entry reads as information. If the example I order makes it possible to decide, I will correct the page.
Bare stone, so nothing hinders the weighing. A stone ring cannot be resized. The size guide.
A carved jade ring: a wide band, cut from one block, worked in relief all the way round. A maned creature coils across it, and I am not going to give it a name I cannot vouch for.
In four lines
A wide band, worked in relief all the way round.
A maned creature, which the page does not name for want of certainty.
Bare stone: no mount, no seam, no metal.
It cannot be resized: a stone ring does not adjust.
Why I do not name the creature
The motif shows a maned beast, coiled across the width of the band, jaws open and legs folded. Three creatures of the Chinese repertoire look much alike at this size: the dragon, the qilin and the pixiu. They are told apart by details, the presence of horns, the number of claws, the shape of the tail, which this format does not let you read with certainty.
I could pick the most saleable of the three, and nobody would contradict me. A false entry reads as information, a cautious entry reads as what it is: the attribute table on this page therefore says relief motif, and the text says what can be seen.
If the example I order makes it possible to decide, I will correct the page and date the correction, as always on this site.
Carving a band, and what it asks of the stone
A carved band is not an engraved band. Material is taken away in depth, the relief comes out of the body of the ring, and the thickness varies greatly from one point to another. Every hollow is a potential start for a fracture, and most ornamental stones split before the roughing out is finished.
Jade takes it thanks to its toughness: its interlocked crystals resist the spread of a crack, a property that has nothing to do with hardness. It is what allowed polished axes to be made in the Neolithic, and it is what permits a deep relief on a band here. The difference between hardness and toughness.
The drawback is upkeep: the hollows hold soap and cream, and they dull faster than the polish. A soft toothbrush and lukewarm water are enough.
What you can look at yourself
On a carved piece, look at the bottom of the hollows. On a dyed stone the colourant sits heavier there than on the surfaces, because it had more purchase on a less polished zone. On a stone coloured through its mass, hollow and surface are the same tone.
Then look at the regularity of the relief. A resin casting gives sharp, identical edges everywhere. A worked stone keeps its hesitations: a deeper stroke here, a blunted edge there. The checks that need no equipment.
Outside Burma, country of extraction not confirmed
What tradition attributes to guardian beasts 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 guardian beastsManed beasts set at the entrance of Chinese buildings, temples or banks, are lions in the Buddhist tradition, often called foo dogs in the West. The repertoire also contains the qilin and the pixiu, and the three are regularly confused even in the trade. What tradition puts into a jade bracelet.
Carving rather than polishingThe oldest Chinese jades are polished rather than carved: the Neolithic axes and discs show no relief at all. Deep carving comes much later, with iron tools and abrasive powders, and it marks a change of craft, not of belief.
The jade you patinate by handChinese usage holds that a jade worn every day becomes warmer and brighter with the years. What changes is the surface, polished by friction and by the natural oils of the skin: the effect is real, the explanation is mechanical.
White before greenCultivated Chinese taste long placed white nephrite at the top, well above green. The present hierarchy comes from the trade in Burmese jadeite, and it is a matter of fashion rather than of quality.
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.
Getting the size wrong is the most common reason for a return in this category, and jade cannot be resized the way a solid metal band can. Two minutes spent measuring almost always avoids it. The size guide.
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.
