Jade frog pendant: five green cabochons set in a gold tone frog mount, legs spread. The head and the webbed toes are metal.
Sold under reserve on the stone. The five cabochons have strictly the same green, which is the behaviour of an added colour rather than a colour of formation.
If a cabochon comes out without forcing, I weigh it and publish the figure. Otherwise the record will stay empty, and it will say so. Why I write it down.
A jade frog pendant: a gold tone mount in the shape of a frog, legs spread, holding five green cabochons, one for the body and four for the thighs and the feet. The head and the webbed toes are metal. It hangs from a fine chain.
In four lines
Five green cabochons set in a gold tone frog mount.
Head, webbed toes and outlines in metal, not in stone.
Sold under reserve: the colour is that of dyed quartzite.
The record will stay empty if no cabochon comes out without forcing.
Five stones, and all of exactly the same green
This is the point that bothers me, and I would rather write it at the top of the page than let it slip by. This frog carries five cabochons cut separately, and all five have strictly the same tone, the same saturation and the same kind of white clouds.
On a natural stone, five pieces cut from different blocks do not give that result: there is always one cabochon darker, another greyer, a third more translucent. Perfect uniformity across five pieces is the behaviour of an added colour, not of a colour of formation.
I am not saying it is certain. I am saying that is what the image shows, that I looked at it on my supplier’s photograph and not only on mine, and that a shop selling one stone has no right to pass over it in silence.
What the weighing will be able to do, and what it will not
The cabochons are held by small gold tone claws folded over their rims. If one of them lifts without forcing on the example I order, I will take the cabochon out, weigh it, and the figure will settle between quartzite, around 2.65, and nephrite, from 2.90.
If none lifts, I will not insist: I am not going to break a mount for a measurement. The record will then stay empty, and it will say so. The method, with its three limits.
One thing is certain in every case: the weighing will never say anything about dyeing. It establishes the mineral, not what has been put into it. Only a laboratory analysis would do that, and I do not have it done. The treatment information sheet.
The frog, and why it is gold tone
The subject is built entirely by the metal: it makes the head, the eyes, the webbed toes and the outline of the legs, and the stone only supplies the solid volumes. It is a piece of mounting, not a piece of cutting, and the work is on the metal side.
It is gold tone, not hallmarked by my supplier. So I write it as gold tone, and not gold plated: a plating is a thickness, so a figure, and I do not invent it. A plating wears first at the points of friction, that is in the nature of the thing.
Outside Burma, country of extraction not confirmed
What tradition attributes to the frog 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.
The three legged toadThe Chinese figure of wealth is not a frog but a three legged toad, the chanchu, shown sitting on a heap of coins with a cash piece in its mouth. The frog of modern jewellery borrows its reading without having its history.
An animal of rainIn the Chinese countryside the croaking of frogs announced water, so the harvest. It is the oldest and most down to earth reading of the motif, long before it moved over to the side of money.
A piece of mountingThe animal subjects of Chinese jade are cut from the mass, not assembled from set cabochons. This frog belongs to twentieth century Western jewellery, which adapted the motif to a mounting technique. Nothing ancient about it.
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.
