Green and white jade ring: a solid band where patches of bright green cross a very pale ground on the diagonal.
The pattern cannot be ordered. It comes from the way the colour was distributed in the block, and the cut passes through it at random: the photographs show one example, not yours.
A two coloured stone tells you more than a plain one: on a jade the green and the white melt together; on a dyed quartzite the colour follows the network of micro cracks. The checks to make.
A green and white jade ring: a solid band where patches of bright green cross a very pale ground on the diagonal. The pattern cannot be ordered, it comes from the way the colour was distributed in the original block, and it falls differently on every ring.
In four lines
A solid band in bare stone: no mount, no seam, no metal.
Green patches in a pale ground, falling differently on every ring.
It cannot be resized: a stone ring does not adjust.
The record will be published: nothing hinders the weighing here.
The mottling, and why no two rings are alike
The colour of jade is not spread evenly through a block. It gathers in veins and patches, according to the way the colouring elements travelled while the rock formed. When a band is cut out of that, the cut passes at random through that distribution.
So one ring will have a wide green patch on top and an almost white back, the next will be crossed by a diagonal, the third barely speckled. The photographs show one example, not yours, and that is worth knowing before ordering.
For many people that is exactly the appeal: you choose a principle, not a reference identical to the last one. For others it is a disappointment, and I would rather it came before the purchase.
What the contrast lets you check
A two coloured stone tells you more than a plain one. On a jade coloured through its mass, the green and the white melt into each other through gradients, sometimes sharp but always progressive at the scale of a millimetre, because the colour is in the material.
On a dyed quartzite the boundary is quite different: the colourant has lodged in the porosity and follows the network of micro cracks, which gives cobweb outlines rather than patches. Against the light, near a window, that network shows without a loupe.
The stone is the band, cut and drilled in one piece. Jade allows that because it is tough, its interlocked crystals resisting the spread of a crack, which is a quite different property from hardness. The difference between the two.
So it cannot be resized: no filing, no tightening, no stretching. It has to be right first time, and fingers swell with heat and at the end of the day. The size guide.
Outside Burma, country of extraction not confirmed
What tradition attributes to two coloured 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 colours in one stoneChinese carvers made a speciality of using the colour zones of a block: a white ground and a green patch become a fish in the foam or a leaf on snow. The practise has a name, qiao se, the clever colour, and it is among the most prized skills of the craft. What tradition puts into a jade bracelet.
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, from the eighteenth century onward, and it is a matter of fashion rather than of quality.
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.
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.
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.
