Jade bead necklace, a long graduated strand: small beads at the nape, larger ones towards the centre, metal clasp. The length is chosen above the buy button.
The green is intense and very even, and I am not going to boast about it: it is the profile this site teaches you to look at closely. Treatment status not determined, as on the whole catalogue.
Strung, so not weighable. This page gives instead what you can check yourself in five minutes, starting with the drill hole.
A jade bead necklace strung as a long graduated strand: small beads at the nape, larger ones towards the centre, closed by a metal clasp. The green is intense, clear, and remarkably even from one bead to the next. That is the point on which this page will be most direct.
In four lines
A long graduated strand: small beads at the nape, larger ones at the centre.
Metal clasp, alloy not specified by my supplier.
An intense and very even green: this page discusses it further down.
Strung, so not weighable: no figure will be published, and this page says so.
This green is the most even in the catalogue, and I am not going to boast about it
On the other pieces in this shop, I write that irregularity is what you expect from a natural material. It would be dishonest to turn the argument around here because the piece is beautiful. This strand is an intense green and practically identical across all its beads, and that is exactly the profile I teach you to look at closely on the other pages.
What I can say that is true: I have neither weighed it nor had it analysed, its treatment status is not determined like that of this whole catalogue, and a uniform colour can come from severe sorting through a large lot just as much as from a coloured impregnation. I do not know which of the two.
What I refuse to write is the opposite: not “untreated”, not “natural”, not “A jadeite”, not “type A”. Those four words are the ones the market uses exactly when it does not know.What the letters A, B and C cover.
What you can check yourself, in five minutes
The drill hole first. On a dyed stone, the dye concentrates at the mouth of the hole, and the rim around it is darker than the rest of the bead. It is the most readable sign, and it needs no equipment.
Then the bead against the light, near a window. Look for whether the colour follows a network of fine cracks, like a web, rather than spreading through the mass. A natural jade shows clouds, patches and a grain that is fibrous or crystalline depending on the mineral.
The beads increase steadily from the nape to the centre of the strand. It is an old stringing, and it has a practical as well as an aesthetic reason: the weight concentrates where the neck carries it best, and the necklace lies flat instead of rolling. It requires sorting to a tenth of a millimetre.
The consequence to remember: have it restrung in order the day the thread tires, each bead in its place. On a strand worn often, the thread wears out before the stone, and any jeweller can redo it. Thread and cord on a jade piece.
What the word jade covers
The word jade designates two unrelated minerals: jadeite, a sodium aluminium pyroxene, and nephrite, a calcium amphibole. It was Alexis Damour who separated them in 1863, in the laboratory. What sets them apart.
It designates, on the other hand, neither serpentine, sold under the names “new jade” and “Korean jade”, nor dyed quartzite, sold as “Malaysia jade”. None of those names designates jade. The length of the strand is chosen above the buy button.
Additional information
Stone
Jadeite or nephrite, not resolved
Colour
Clear green
Stone shape
Round beads
Motif
No motif
Mounting
Bead strand
Metal
Silver tone, alloy not stated
Setting
Drilled stone
Worn by
Women
Paired stones
None, jade only
Mineral family
Calcic amphibole, Sodium aluminium pyroxene
Hardness (Mohs)
6 to 7
Reference density
2.90 to 3.36 g/cm³
Toughness
Exceptional, interlocking crystals
Treatment
Not determined
Origin
Outside Burma, country of extraction not confirmed
What tradition attributes to a jade necklace
What follows changes register, and I flag it rather than blending it into the rest of the page. None of it is proven. These are customs and beliefs, old and documented, which I report because they are part of the history of this stone. No piece of jewellery in this shop is sold as a treatment, and I claim no effect for this one.
The stone worn against the skinJade worn at the neck takes the temperature of the body in a few minutes and keeps it. That is a physical property, conductivity, and several traditions have made something quite different of it. I stay with the first.
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 strand of beadsThe necklace of round beads is a late form, come from modern trade, whereas the pierced disc and the pendant are attested from the Neolithic. The age of the stone is not the age of the object.
The graduated strandStringing with beads growing towards the centre is found in several jewellery traditions, in Asia as elsewhere. It has been read as a figure of progression; it is first of all a way of balancing the weight on the neck.
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.
