Jade plaque pendant: a pale green stone, highly translucent, edged with a fillet of engraved dots, with a standing haloed figure carved in reserve. Knotted to a braided black cord.
The subject is left matt while the ground takes a mirror polish: the contrast comes not from colour but from surface finish, and it shifts with the light.
The figure is not named by my supplier, and the page does not do it on his behalf. The plaque unties, so it weighs. Why I write it down.
A jade plaque pendant: a pale green stone, highly translucent, cut as a rounded plaque and edged with a fillet of small engraved dots. A standing figure is carved in reserve on it, haloed, draped, a child in the arm. It is knotted to a braided black cord.
In four lines
A stone pale green and highly translucent, the light goes through.
Standing figure carved in reserve, left matt so it stands off the ground.
Fillet of engraved dots all round the rim, back smooth.
The record will be published: the plaque unties, so it weighs.
A figure I will not name on his behalf
The plaque carries a standing figure, ringed with a halo, dressed in a long pleated robe, holding a child in the left arm and a stem in the right hand. Those are exactly the attributes of Guanyin in her child granting form, the one invoked for a birth.
My supplier, for his part, does not name her. He sells a figure plaque, no more. So I can describe what I see, and I can say what it corresponds to in the iconography, but I am not going to turn a recognition into a certificate: the record writes it as not named.
If you are looking for a piece explicitly sold as such, the jade guanyin pendant shows the figure seated on her lotus, and its listing names her. The two stones have neither the same colour nor the same format.
The subject is matt, the ground is polished
This is the most interesting technical detail of the piece. The figure is not simply in relief: it was left unpolished while the ground received a mirror polish. The contrast therefore comes not from colour but from surface finish.
The effect reads very clearly on a translucent stone like this one: the ground lets the light through and looks dark and deep, the figure stops it and stands out milky white. Tilt the plaque and the contrast almost reverses.
The fillet of engraved dots running round the edge plays the same part on a smaller scale. It is a finishing touch you do not see on cheap pieces, because it is done with a point and it takes time.
A pale stone, and why the weighing counts double
On a deep green, the weighing separates cleanly: serpentine sits around 2.6, quartzite around 2.65, nephrite starts at 2.90. The gap is clear. On a stone as pale as this one a third candidate invites itself: dolomitic marble, sold under the name white jade, which reaches 2.85.
2.85 against 2.90, the margin is thin, and that is why I will not stop at the figure on this reference. I will also look at the translucency at the edge and the grain under raking light, two observations the page will publish with the measurement.
Outside Burma, country of extraction not confirmed
What tradition attributes to this figure 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 figure carrying a childIn Chinese iconography, a haloed figure holding an infant denotes Guanyin in her child granting form. Wishes for a birth were addressed to her, and her statuettes stood in almost every village temple. My supplier does not name her, and the page does not do it on his behalf.
The plaque as a portable imageWearing an engraved figure rather than leaving it in a temple is an old practise, tied to travel and absence. The plaque replaced the altar, and it slipped under the clothing, out of sight.
Pale green, called water greenVery pale and translucent jades were long preferred to bright greens in cultivated Chinese taste, where discretion counts more than brilliance. The fashion for intense green is far more recent, and largely commercial.
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.
