Jade drop earrings, two pierced discs of deep green, capped with an openwork gold-toned metal of scrolls that comes to straddle them.
Mounted on hooks. The metal is gold toned with no alloy specified, and neither the green cabochons nor the white pavé are named anywhere: I will not name them either.
Two stones of the same pair are never the same green, and that is a signature rather than a flaw. Mounted, so not weighable. Treatment status not determined.
Jade drop earrings built on two pierced discs of deep green, capped with an openwork gold-toned metal of scrolls that comes to straddle them. A small green cabochon is set in the middle of that openwork, another on the flower of the hook, and a pavé of white stones completes the whole.
In four lines
Two pierced discs, capped with an openwork gold-toned metal of scrolls.
Mounted on open hooks, light, with no clasp.
Two green cabochons and a white pavé, all not identified.
Mounted, so not weighable: no figure will be published, and this page says so.
These are hooks, not hoops
These earrings are not hoops: there is no ring at all on this pair, only an open hook, sometimes called a sleeper. I say so because the two are often confused, and they are not worn the same way.
A hook does not close: the earring holds by its own weight and by the curve of the wire. It is comfortable and light, and it is also the fitting most easily lost, a jumper or a scarf being enough to unhook it.
The pierced disc, and the metal that straddles it
The stone is a flat ring with a central hole, the shape called in China the peace buckle, descended from the great Neolithic Bi disc. It has no sharp edge and no point, which is exactly what a stone of ordinary hardness needs. Hardness and toughness.
On this model, an openwork metal cap covers the top of the disc and crosses it diagonally. It is pretty, and it has two consequences: the stone is held by metal, so not weighable, and the openwork catches long hair as it does wool stitches.
Why I name neither the metal nor the set stones
The metal is gold toned. My supplier says neither gold plated, nor vermeil, nor gilded brass, and those three cannot be told apart in a photograph. On a sensitive ear, however, the difference is no small one.
The two small green cabochons could be jade or something else; the white pavé could be zircon, topaz or glass. So I will not settle it. Naming a stone wrongly is precisely what the decree on designations penalises, and a shop that calls a zircon a “diamond” has lost the right to explain the difference between jade and serpentine.
A pair, so two stones
In a natural material, two discs cut from the same block are never strictly identical: one will be a little milkier, the other a little more translucent, and the green will shift by a quarter tone. Look at them side by side against the light, that is where it shows.
A pair whose two stones were a strictly identical green would deserve a closer look rather than praise: a perfectly reproducible colour is what a dye produces, not a rock. I assert nothing about this one, whose treatment status is not determined. The checks that need no equipment, and the false names of jade.
Additional information
Stone
Jadeite or nephrite, not resolved
Colour
Clear green
Stone shape
Pierced disc
Motif
No motif
Mounting
Ear wire
Metal
Gold tone, alloy not stated
Setting
Drilled stone
Worn by
Women
Paired stones
Green stone, not identified, White stones, not identified
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 jade worn at the ear
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 that movesAn earring follows the step and the breath. Several traditions have given a meaning to that constant movement; I mention it because it comes up often, without giving it more weight than that.
The ear, a late customJade was first an object of rite, rank and power, rarely an earring. The jade earring is a recent form, carried by modern trade rather than by tradition.
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 peace buckleThe small pierced disc carries in Chinese a name that translates as peace buckle, and it descends from the great Bi disc of Neolithic burials. It is one of the rare shapes of jade whose traditional name is attested and stable.
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.
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.
