Jade and coral ring: a rectangular cabochon in a pale water green, closed set in a chased silver, surrounded by red coral, a lapis and a pearl as charms.
Four materials, and only one is jade. The coral is of animal origin, the lapis is a rock, the pearl is not announced. A page that said only jade ring would be false by omission.
The closed setting forbids taking the stone out, so the record will stay empty: I am not going to damage a ring to obtain a figure.
A jade and coral ring: a rectangular cabochon in a pale water green, closed set at the centre of a chased silver, surrounded by two red coral cabochons, a lapis and a pearl hanging as charms. It is the most composite piece in the catalogue, and the one whose record runs to the most lines.
In four lines
A rectangular cabochon in a pale water green, closed set.
Red coral, lapis lazuli and a pearl, which are not jade.
Chased silver mount, not hallmarked by my supplier.
The record will stay empty: a closed setting forbids weighing.
Four materials, and I name them all
In a shop that sells one stone only, a composite piece has to be taken apart. The central cabochon is the jade. The two small red cabochons are coral, an organic material of animal origin, not a mineral. The blue cabochon hanging below is lapis lazuli, a rock, and not a simple stone. And the small white sphere is a pearl, whose origin, natural or cultured, is not announced.
I write them all into the record, each on its line. A page that said only jade ring would be false by omission: three of the four visible materials are not jade, and it is their assembly that makes the jewel.
Coral deserves a further word: it is a living material taken from the sea, subject to regulation depending on the species, and its intense red is sometimes enhanced. My supplier states neither the species nor the treatment, so I know no more than that.
Why this page will carry no figure
The green cabochon is held by a closed setting, a collar of silver folded down over its whole edge. To weigh it you would have to take it out, so open the collar, which deforms the mount and cannot be put right cleanly on a chased piece.
I am not going to damage a ring to obtain a figure. The Mineral line therefore says what the supplier announces, and nothing more, and it is flagged as not established.
The solid band rings of the section, by contrast, weigh without difficulty because the stone is bare: the black jade band ring is one of them.
A piece that is worn on its own
With four materials, three colours and charms that move, this ring takes up the whole hand. It layers with nothing, and it asks for plain clothes if it is not to turn into a jumble.
The charms are the point to watch day to day: they hang, so they catch. A loosely knitted jumper is their worst enemy, and a charm torn off cannot be replaced identically.
Outside Burma, country of extraction not confirmed
What tradition attributes to these four materials
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.
Red and blueCoral and lapis enter Chinese adornment by way of Tibet and Central Asia, and they are found above all on Mongol and Manchu pieces. Their association with jade is late, and it is first of all a matter of colours. What tradition puts into a jade bracelet.
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.
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 greenThe old rankings place white jade first, ahead of green, and associate it with purity of character. It is a hierarchy of cultivated taste, which says nothing about the mineral quality of a piece.
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.
