Olive green jade bracelet: a row of beads in a dull green mixed with yellow, closed on a white pierced disc and an enamelled flower.
This olive green is also the green of serpentine, the stone that circulates most under the name of jade, and I am not going to act as though I did not know it. The weighing separates them without ambiguity: 2.6 against 2.90 at least.
An olive green jade bracelet: a row of beads in a dull, warm green mixed with yellow, closed on a white pierced disc and an enamelled flower. It is the least seen colour in the section, and it is also the one on which I must set a reservation I set nowhere else.
In four lines
An olive green, dull and warm, mixed with yellow: the least seen colour in the section.
A white pierced disc and an enamelled flower close the row.
Serpentine gives that green, and the page says so before the weighing.
Strung on elastic, it is taken at the wrist.
Why I speak of serpentine on this page and not on the others
Serpentine is the stone that circulates most under the name of jade, labelled new jade, Korean jade or olivine jade. It is soft, it is easily cut, and its commonest colour is precisely a dull yellow green, between olive and moss.
On a frank green or a water green the confusion is less immediate. Here it is: the colour of this bracelet is the type colour of serpentine. To say anything else would be to keep quiet about what is obvious to anyone who knows stones a little.
The good news is that this is the easiest case in the catalogue to settle. Serpentine runs around 2.6 and jade starts at 2.90: the gap is far wider than the uncertainty of a kitchen scale. If the figure falls on the wrong side, the piece carries its true mineral name and the word jade leaves the title. The names that do not denote jade.
Two stones, two colours
The row is olive green, but the pierced disc that closes it is white, and two pale beads frame it. These are therefore two tints, and nothing says they come from the same block or even from the same species: I treat them separately in the record.
The flower is gilt metal enamelled in green, with a small red stone at its centre. It is not jade and the page does not present it as such. The gold tone is a plating on an alloy my supplier does not specify.
The whole is busier than the other rows in the section, and that is owned up to: you buy it for the contrast of the dull green and the white, not for plainness.
What you can check yourself
Look at the drill hole. On a dyed stone the colourant concentrates there and the rim is darker than the rest. Be careful though: a serpentine is not necessarily dyed, its green is often natural, and so the hole will not give it away.
What really separates serpentine from jade without a scale is hardness. Serpentine is scratched by steel, jade is not. I do not recommend trying it on a piece you have just bought, and that is precisely why I weigh rather than scratch. The checks that need no equipment.
Outside Burma, country of extraction not confirmed
What tradition attributes to jade and to the disc
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 bi disc, and HeavenThe ritual texts associate the pierced disc with Heaven, round, and the square tablet with Earth. Examples have been found in Neolithic burials, laid on the body. What tradition puts into a jade bracelet.
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.
The jade you patinate by handA row of beads worn every day ends by taking a polish the workshop does not give. Tradition sees in it an exchange between the stone and its wearer; it is mostly friction, and it is quite real.
The polish, and what is read in itThe scholarly tradition associates jade with a soft rather than a sharp gloss, and makes of it an image of restraint. It is an aesthetic reading turned moral, not an observation about the stone.
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.
