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.
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.
The wrong size is the main reason for a return in this category, and jade cannot be resized the way a solid metal band can. Two minutes of measuring almost always prevents it. The size guide.
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.
