A real jade pendant cut as a rectangular bar, drilled right through and polished on every face. The green is pale and cloudy, deeper in patches, milkier elsewhere. It is strung on a cord, with wooden beads and brass washers.
In four lines
Drilled bar, polished on every face, with no metal at all on the stone.
Strung on a cord, with wooden beads and brass washers.
Bare stone, therefore weighable: the figure will be published here, with its date.
Real means jadeite or nephrite, never serpentine or dyed quartzite.
What real means here, and what it does not mean
A real jade pendant is, on this site, a pendant whose stone is jadeite or nephrite, and not serpentine sold under the name “new jade” or “Korean jade”, nor dyed quartzite sold as “Malaysia jade”. None of those names designates jade.
Real never sets the untreated against the treated. That is the most widespread confusion on the market, and it suits everybody except the buyer. The treatment status of this piece is not determined, it is written in the record, and no word on this page suggests otherwise. What the letters A, B and C cover.
A cloudy green, and why I prefer it to a perfect one
The colour of this bar is not uniform: it advances in patches, deeper in places, almost white elsewhere, with milky passages sometimes called cloudy. That is what a natural material does, where chromium or iron did not distribute themselves to order.
It is not proof, and I will not write it as such: a quartzite can be dyed unevenly, and a nephrite can be remarkably homogeneous. It is simply the opposite of the signal that should alert you, a colour rigorously identical over the whole piece and concentrated around the drill holes. 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. It was a Frenchman who separated them, Alexis Damour, in 1863, and it took a laboratory to do it. What sets them apart.
By eye, on a pale cloudy green like this one, the distinction is not reliable. Density, on the other hand, is: the two ranges do not overlap, 3.25 to 3.36 against 2.90 to 3.03. That is the figure the weighing will give, and that is the day the Mineral line of the record will stop saying “or”.
The cord, and what is better known in advance
The bar hangs from a braided cord, assembled with wooden beads, brass washers and a pale jade bead. The cord wears out before the stone, and that is true of every stringing: it can be replaced, and there is nothing abnormal about it. Brass, for its part, takes a patina and darkens with time; that belongs to the metal, it is not a fault. Thread and cord on a jade piece.
A drilled stone carries all its weight on its drill hole. Avoid letting it hang over a sharp edge, and store it flat rather than suspended. Care in detail.
Additional information
Stone
Jadeite or nephrite, not resolved
Colour
Light green
Stone shape
Bar
Motif
No motif
Mounting
Braided cord
Setting
Drilled stone
Worn by
Unisex
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 a jade pendant
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 elongated shapeJade bars and cylinders are attested very early in China, often engraved with a short inscription. These ones are plain: the shape comes close to the supports for text without being one.
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 Tibetan stringingWooden beads, brass washers and inlaid beads come from a Himalayan vocabulary of mounting, taken up today by the trade. It is a style, not a provenance.
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.
