Jade fox pendant: the animal carved seated in the round, tail swept up along the flank. Almost no engraved line, everything is made by the curve. Knotted to a strand of green and black beads.
An entirely smooth piece: it does not catch in loops of wool, does not hold dust, and cleans with a wipe of a cloth.
The beads of the strand are not announced as jade, and the page says so. The stone unties, so it weighs: the record will be published. Why I write it down.
A jade fox pendant: the animal is carved seated, in the round, muzzle turned to one side and tail swept up along the flank to the shoulder. Almost no engraved line, everything is made by the curve. It is knotted to a strand of green and black beads.
In four lines
A seated fox carved in the round, tail along the flank.
Almost no engraving: the shape is made by curve and polish alone.
A small piece, very smooth: nothing catches on clothing.
The record will be published: the stone unties, so it weighs.
A carving without a single burin stroke
Look at the piece closely: there is almost no engraved line. No fur, no hollowed eyes, no claws. The muzzle, the ears and the tail exist only through volume, through the way the stone was cut away and then rounded.
That is a harder choice than it sounds. Engraving rescues an approximate shape: a few well placed strokes make an animal readable even on a badly roughed out block. Here there is nothing to rescue it, the curve has to be right first time.
The result is an entirely smooth piece, with no ridge and no hollow. It does not hold dust, it does not catch in the loops of a jumper, and it cleans with a wipe of a cloth. How to clean a jade stone.
The fox, a motif that is not innocent
It is worth saying: in China the fox is not a neutral animal. The huli jing, the fox spirit, runs through the whole of classical literature as a figure of seduction and cunning, able to take human form. This is not an image of innocence.
The meaning has two faces, though, and the older one is favourable: the nine tailed fox of Mount Tu is, in the earliest texts, an omen of a good marriage and a prosperous dynasty. The uneasy reading came later, mostly under the Ming and the Qing.
Today the motif is sold above all as a charm for allure and encounters, and that is the reading you will find everywhere. I report it as it stands, as a contemporary belief, not as a property of the stone. Jade as a lucky charm, and what that is worth.
What the stone is, and what remains to be established
The green is frank, fairly even, with a mirror polish that returns the light along the whole curve of the back. A polish of that quality on a domed shape calls for a tough material that does not flake under the wheel: that is a point in favour of jade, but serpentine polishes well too.
Only the density settles it without a laboratory. What is sold under the name jade is very often serpentine, around 2.6, or dyed quartzite, around 2.65, while nephrite starts at 2.90.
Outside Burma, country of extraction not confirmed
What tradition attributes to the fox and to 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.
An omen, then a demonIn the oldest texts, the nine tailed fox of Mount Tu announces a happy marriage and a lasting dynasty. The figure darkens under the Ming and the Qing, where it becomes the seducing spirit of the tales. Two opposite readings, and the second has erased the first.
The fox of the talesStrange Tales from a Chinese Studio, Pu Songling's collection of the seventeenth century, is full of vixens who take human form. They are rarely wicked there, and often more loyal than the humans they keep company with.
A charm for encountersIn contemporary use the fox pendant is sold as an amulet for allure and for meeting people. It is a recent and very widespread belief, which owes much to commerce and nothing to the ancient texts.
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.
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.
