Raw jade, a block of nephrite broken on every face and never polished. Matte green, white patches, ocher runs of iron oxide.
A rough piece hides nothing: you see the grain of the fracture, the real distribution of the colour and the traces of weathering, which polishing closes over. Wet it to see the colour a polish would give.
A bare, unpolished stone: it is the object weighing measures best, and the figure will be published here with its date. Treatment status not determined.
A block of raw jade, in nephrite, broken on every face and never polished. The green is matte, without the slightest shine, mixed with white patches and streaked with ocher runs of iron oxide. It is the most honest piece in the catalogue: nothing is hidden in it because nothing has been done to it.
In four lines
A block neither cut nor polished, broken on every face.
Matte green, white patches, ocher runs of iron oxide.
A bare, unpolished stone: the object weighing measures best.
A rough piece is not worn. It is an object to hold, to set down, to look at.
What a rough piece shows and a polish hides
Polishing closes the surface of a stone: it erases the grain, evens out the colour and gives everything a similar shine. That is what makes jade beautiful, and it is also what makes well-worked serpentine hard to tell from jade in a photo.
A rough piece hides nothing. You see the grain of the fracture, fibrous and catchy on nephrite, glassier and shell-shaped on quartz. You see the real distribution of the colour, in patches and veins, without a polish having leveled it. And you see the traces of weathering, here ocher runs of iron oxide, which tell of the stone’s time in the ground.
None of these signs is proof, and I will not present them as such. They only make examination possible, where a polished, mounted object rules it out. The checks that need no equipment.
The matte green, and why it is not disappointing
Raw jade does not shine. The green looks dull, almost powdery, very far from the glow of this shop’s cabochons. It is not a quality flaw, it is the surface finish. The same stone, polished, would light up.
If you want to judge it, wet it: the water fills the tiny irregularities of the fracture and brings out, for a few minutes, roughly the colour a polish would give. It is what buyers do at stone markets, and it costs nothing. The colours of jade.
Nephrite, and why it was made into axes
This piece is listed as nephrite, a calcium amphibole, one of the two minerals the word jade covers. The other is jadeite, a pyroxene, and the two are not related at all: Alexis Damour established this in 1863. What sets them apart.
On a raw block, the property that matters can be felt in the hand: jade is tough. Its structure of interlocking fibers resists the spread of a crack, which explains why polished axes were made from it in the Neolithic and why a block this size does not split with one hammer blow. Its hardness, however, is ordinary, 6 to 6.5. The difference between hardness and toughness.
What to do with it
A rough piece is not worn. It is set down, held in the hand, used as a paperweight, a reference sample or a starting point for anyone who wants to have it cut. There is no size to choose, no special care, and no fragile mounting.
A rinse in lukewarm water with a mild soap is enough, with a soft brush for the hollows of the fracture. Never ultrasonic cleaners, never steam, never solvents, as with every piece in this catalogue whose treatment status is not determined. Care in detail.
Additional information
Stone
Néphrite
Colour
Two tone
Stone shape
Rough stone
Motif
No motif
Mounting
None
Metal
None
Setting
No setting
Worn by
Unisex
Paired stones
None, jade only
Mineral family
Calcic amphibole
Hardness (Mohs)
6 to 6.5
Reference density
2.90 to 3.03 g/cm³
Toughness
Exceptional, interlocking crystals
Treatment
Not determined
Origin
Outside Burma, country of extraction not confirmed
Delivery times
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.
