Jade leaf pendant: the blade cut in volume, folded into two domed lobes on either side of a hollowed vein. Knotted to a strand of green and black beads.
The hole is drilled in the stalk, so the leaf hangs the way it grows. It is the easiest piece in the set to give: no sign, no figure, nothing to interpret.
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 leaf pendant: the blade is cut in volume and folds into two domed lobes on either side of a hollowed vein. The tip droops, and the stalk is drilled for the thread. It is knotted to a strand of green and black beads.
In four lines
A leaf cut in volume, not punched out of a flat plaque.
Two domed lobes on either side of a hollowed vein.
The stalk is drilled: the leaf hangs the right way up.
The record will be published: the stone unties, so it weighs.
A leaf in volume, not a silhouette
Many leaf pendants are flat plaques punched into the shape of a leaf, with a few veins scratched on top. This one is worked through its thickness: both halves of the blade are domed and rise on either side of a vein hollowed like a gutter, exactly as a real leaf folds.
The back is not flat either, it follows the opposite hollow. Held in the hand the piece has the curve of a small shell, and it settles naturally against the sternum instead of gaping.
The tip droops slightly, which is more than a stylistic effect: the hole is drilled in the stalk, so the leaf hangs the way it grows, and not upside down as on many cheap models.
A simple motif, and deliberately so
There is no dragon here, no deity, no character. It is a plant object, smooth and with no explicit message, and it is probably the easiest piece in the set to give: no risk of picking the wrong sign, the wrong religion or the wrong symbol.
The leaf remains a loaded motif in Chinese tradition, though, for a reason of language: the word that names it is pronounced like the one that means a trade, an enterprise, the work one carries on. Hence the habit of giving a jade leaf for a new post.
That kind of link rests on homophony, not on a property of the plant or of the stone. I report it as a custom, and the panel below says so along with the others. The motifs most often found on these stones.
What the stone is, and what remains to be established
The green is deep in the hollow of the vein, where the stone is thickest, and becomes distinctly lighter along the edge of the lobes. That way of lightening where the material thins is the signature of a translucent stone, and this shape shows it very well.
It is not enough to conclude, though. What is sold under the name jade is very often serpentine or dyed quartzite, which also let the light through. Only the density settles it without a laboratory.
Outside Burma, country of extraction not confirmed
What tradition attributes to the leaf 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.
A leaf, a tradeThe word for leaf is pronounced like the one that means the work, the trade, the enterprise one carries on. Hence the habit of giving a jade leaf for a new post or for setting up on one's own. The link is in the language, not in the plant.
Golden branch and jade leafThe expression once named the children of the imperial house, then by extension any noble birth. It is still in use today, often with irony, to speak of someone raised in cotton wool.
What grows backThe leaf falls and returns: it is one of the few plant motifs whose reading rests on observation rather than on a pun. It is lent a sense of resumption and of cycle, shared with many other cultures.
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.
