Men’s jade necklace, a flat, smooth rectangular plaque, polished on both faces, with no engraving at all. Drilled and threaded on a black braided cord.
The shape has a name in China, the no-business plaque: it is deliberately left blank. Flat, it lies on the breastbone instead of rolling and does not print through the fabric.
Cord adjustable by a sliding knot, no size to choose. No metal touches the stone: it is weighable, and the figure will be published here. Treatment status not determined.
A men’s jade necklace built on a rectangular plaque, flat, polished on both faces and with no engraving at all. It is drilled at the top and threaded on a black braided cord, with a small round jade bead above it. The green is deep, with lighter zones that shift with the angle.
In four lines
A flat, smooth plaque, polished on both faces, with no engraving at all.
Drilled and strung on a braided cord: no metal touches the stone.
Bare stone, therefore weighable: the figure will be published here, with its date.
The length of the cord is set by a sliding knot, not by a clasp.
A deliberately blank plaque
This shape has a name in China: the no-business plaque. It is a rectangular plaque deliberately left with no motif, no character and no engraving, as against the plaques loaded with dragons, phoenixes or inscriptions. Emptiness is the subject.
I am not going to claim an effect for it, this site claims none for any stone. But the shape is documented and old, which is more than can be said of most motifs sold today, and it has a very concrete merit: a smooth surface has neither hollows where a dye lodges, nor a fine edge that chips.
Flat, and why that is the right choice under a shirt
A flat plaque lies against the breastbone instead of rolling. It does not print through the fabric as a thick pendant would, and it does not turn on itself: as both faces are identical, that would make no difference anyway.
The cord is braided and adjustable: the length is taken at the sliding knot, so there is no size to choose above the buy button. A cord wears out before the stone, and it can be replaced. Thread and cord on a jade piece.
A deep green, and what can be read in it
The colour is clear, a little bottle green in places, lighter in patches, with a little light passing at the edges. That irregularity is what you expect from a natural material, where iron or chromium did not distribute themselves to order.
It is not proof for all that, and the treatment status of this piece is not determined, like that of this whole catalogue. What should alert you is the opposite: a colour rigorously identical everywhere, or concentrated around the drill hole and along micro cracks. Look at the plaque against the light, near a window. The checks that need no equipment.
Jadeite or nephrite, and why this page does not settle it yet
The two minerals are not related at all: jadeite is a sodium aluminium pyroxene, nephrite a calcium amphibole, and it was Alexis Damour who separated them in 1863, in the laboratory. What sets them apart.
By eye, on a deep green, the distinction is not reliable. Density, on the other hand, is: the two ranges do not overlap. That is the figure the weighing will give, and that is the day the Mineral line of the record will stop saying “or”. Meanwhile, jade is tough whichever of the two it is: a thin plaque holds because its interlocking structure stops cracks, not because it would be hard. The difference between hardness and toughness, and jade in the masculine.
Additional information
Stone
Jadeite or nephrite, not resolved
Colour
Clear green
Stone shape
Polished plaque
Motif
No motif
Mounting
Braided cord
Metal
None
Setting
Drilled stone
Worn by
Men
Paired stones
None, jade only
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 the jade plaque
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 worn against the skinJade takes the temperature of the body in a few minutes and keeps it. That is a physical property, conductivity, and several traditions have made something quite different of it. I stay with the first.
The no-business plaqueThe rectangular plaque left blank carries in Chinese a name that translates as no-business plaque, as against the plaques loaded with dragons or inscriptions. Emptiness is the subject there, and the shape is old.
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.
Jade in the masculineJade was long an attribute of men in China, worn at the belt and on the seal, before becoming a woman's jewel in the West. The reversal is recent and cultural, not ancient.
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.
The wrong size is the main reason for a return in this category, and jade cannot be resized the way a solid metal band can. Two minutes of measuring almost always prevents it. The size guide.
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.
