Water green jade ring: an oval cabochon in a very light green, claw set in a silver tone openwork of scrolls and leaves.
The openwork is not only decoration: it lets daylight pass behind the stone and come out on top. On a pale translucent green, a solid mount would put the stone out.
A claw setting comes apart, unlike a closed one: the stone comes out, so the weighing is possible and I will publish it. The method.
A water green jade ring: an oval cabochon in a very light green, claw set in a silver tone openwork of scrolls and leaves. The openwork is not only decoration, it lets light pass behind the stone, and that is what holds this pale green up.
In four lines
An oval cabochon in a very light water green, domed and polished.
Silver tone openwork mount: light passes behind the stone.
Claw set, so the stone comes out and can be weighed.
The silver is not hallmarked by my supplier: I write silver tone, not 925.
Why openwork changes everything on a pale stone
A solid mount sets the stone on a bed of metal. On a dark jade that has no consequence: the light was not going to cross it anyway. On a translucent water green it is a disaster, because the stone goes out and looks grey.
Here the mount is pierced right through. Daylight enters from behind, crosses the cabochon and comes out on top, which gives the stone a luminosity it would not otherwise have. It is a technical choice before it is an aesthetic one.
The drawback is upkeep: openwork holds soap, cream and dust. A rinse in lukewarm water and careful drying are enough, but you have to think of it, where a solid mount makes do with a wipe of a cloth.
Claws or closed setting, and what it changes for you
A claw setting holds the stone with four metal legs folded over its edge. It leaves almost the whole stone visible and, above all, it comes apart: a jeweller lifts the claws, takes the stone out, and folds them back. That is what lets me weigh this reference.
A closed setting, by contrast, shuts the stone inside a continuous collar. It is safer, nothing catches, but it forbids removal: the pages in the shop that carry one announce an empty record, and they say so. The oval jade ring is one such case.
Day to day, claws call for a check now and then: a claw that spreads is mended in two minutes at a jeweller, a lost stone is not recovered.
What you can look at yourself
On a pale translucent cabochon, the simplest thing is to hold it in front of a lamp and look at what comes through. Jade spreads a soft, milky glow; a glass lets light through frankly, without that veil; a resin blocks it.
Look also at the reflection that moves when you turn your hand. On a stone it glides in a soft band, because it forms partly below the surface. On a glass it stays sharp and local. The checks that need no equipment.
Outside Burma, country of extraction not confirmed
What tradition attributes to water green 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.
Water green, called the colour of springVery pale greens have their own name in the Chinese jade trade, and they were long preferred to bright greens in scholarly taste, where restraint counted more than brilliance. The fashion for intense green is recent and commercial.
Transparency as a qualityConnoisseurs judge a jadeite on its shui, its water, that is the depth to which light enters it. A pale but deep stone is worth more than a vivid, opaque one, and that hierarchy is old. What tradition puts into a jade bracelet.
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.
