A jade and gold ring set with a wide water green jadeite oval cabochon, bezel set within a gilt rim. Around it, a crown of small white stones each in its own setting, and four white pearls at the four cardinal points. The band is open at the back and adjusts to the finger.
In four lines
- A large water green oval cabochon, bezel set within a gilt rim.
- A crown of white stones and four pearls, none of them identified.
- An open band: no size to choose, it adjusts to the finger.
- Set, therefore unweighable: no figure will be published, and the page says so.
What “jade and gold” means here, and what it does not mean
It is the name under which the market sells this kind of ring, and the one people type. I keep it. But I am not going to let you believe that it means solid gold, nor even a guaranteed thickness of plating.
What I know: the metal is gold toned. What I do not know: whether it is gold plated, vermeil, that is to say gilt silver, or gilt brass. My supplier does not say, and the difference is far from small, on the price as on how it holds up over time. Gilt brass wears through in a few months of daily wear, vermeil lasts far longer.
The same call applies to the seven other “and gold” pieces in this catalogue. The day a supplier gives me an answer in writing, it will appear in the reading, and not before. I weigh, I do not certify.
Neither the white stones nor the pearls are named
The crown counts some twenty small faceted white stones, each in its own setting. At that size, a cubic zirconia, a white topaz and a diamond look alike, and it takes a loupe and practise to tell them apart. I will call them by none of those names.
The four round, milky elements have the look of pearls, with the orient that goes with it. But a cultured pearl and an imitation in nacred glass look much alike in a photograph, and nothing tells me which one I am selling. So the page writes “white pearls, cultured or imitation not stated”, which is ugly and exact.
An open band, and why there is no size to choose
The two ends of the band do not meet at the back. You slide it on from the side of the finger, then close it with light pressure. It is the most forgiving mounting there is, and it is also the one that has no size: you will see no dropdown above the buy button.
One piece of advice: metal tires if you open and close it every day. Set it once, and leave it alone. On a ring with a head as wide as this one, a setting that is too loose lets the stone tip onto the side of the finger.
The cabochon, and what the bezel setting costs
The stone is a domed oval, polished solid, of a soft translucent water green. The bezel setting is the safest mounting for a cabochon: no claw catches, the stone is held through 360 degrees. It has a price, and the price falls on me: enclosed in the metal, the stone can no longer be weighed.
The green of jadeite comes from chromium, nephrite’s from iron. The two minerals are unrelated and it was Alexis Damour who separated them in 1863. What tells them apart. Jade is tough, but its hardness stays ordinary: the quartz in dust, which rates 7, dulls a dome far more surely than a knock. Hardness and toughness.
A bezel setting holds water under the stone, and pearls tolerate neither acid, nor alcohol, nor perfume. Lukewarm water, a mild soap, thorough drying, and the piece goes on after the perfume. Never ultrasonics, never steam, never solvent. Care in detail.
