White jade plaque bracelet: slabs of a milky white, polished and domed, joined edge to edge on a double elastic.
Sold subject to weighing. On a white the intervals brush against each other: dolomitic marble reaches 2.85, nephrite starts at 2.90. If the figure falls below, the word jade leaves the title.
A stone is not dyed white: examining the drill hole is of no use here, and it is the translucency at the edge of a slab that you look at. The checks to make.
A white jade plaque bracelet: slabs of a milky white, polished and domed, joined edge to edge on a double elastic. It is the piece in the section I am most careful about, because white is the colour imitations copy best and the one on which the scale separates least clearly.
In four lines
Smooth, domed slabs of a milky white, with no engraving.
Joined edge to edge on two elastics: the ring stays flat and does not twist.
Sold subject to weighing: white is the most imitated colour.
Taken at the wrist, it goes on by stretching.
Why white is the hardest case
On a green the weighing separates widely: a jade at 2.90 at least against a serpentine or a quartzite around 2.6, and the gap leaves no room for doubt. On a white the intervals brush against each other. Dolomitic marble reaches 2.85, nephrite starts at 2.90, and five hundredths separate the two.
There is a simple reason for that: a stone is not dyed white. The imitations of white jade are therefore not coloured stones, they are pale stones that are naturally so, marble and quartzite foremost, and those happen to fall in the neighbouring density range.
So examining the drill hole, which is the basic gesture on a dyed stone, is of no use here: there is no colourant to concentrate. It is one of the few pieces in the catalogue where the eye has almost nothing to hold on to.
What you look at when the hole says nothing
You look at the translucency at the edge of a slab. Jade lets the daylight through over a few millimetres of thickness, giving a diffuse and warm glow; dolomitic marble stays milky right through, and glass lets it through too frankly.
You also look at the polish. Jade takes a greasy polish, slightly oily to the touch as to the eye, quite different from the dry shine of a polished marble or the vitreous shine of a resin.
Neither of these two signs is a proof, and I am not going to pretend otherwise. They point, the scale decides. The checks that need no equipment.
A white that is worn, and that gets dirty
It is a pale piece laid flat against the skin, and it marks. Sebum, creams and perfumes leave a film that dulls the polish after a few weeks, far more visibly than on a dark green. It is cleaned in lukewarm water and dried with a soft cloth, with no soap and no product, and above all with no ultrasonic bath.
The old Chinese texts place white jade first, ahead of green, and associate it with purity of character. It is a hierarchy of cultivated taste, which says nothing about the mineral quality of a piece, but it explains why this white is still sought.
Outside Burma, country of extraction not confirmed
What tradition attributes to white 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.
Mutton fat whiteThe old texts give that name to the most sought after white, for its greasy look rather than for its whiteness. It is a description of the surface, and it remains the best word for that polish. 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 plaques of the beltUnder the Ming, jade plaques mounted on a belt marked the rank of the official who wore it, and their number counted as much as the stone. It is the one documented tradition specific to plaques, and it says nothing about a bracelet.
The first rank of the coloursThe old rankings place white jade ahead of green and associate it with purity of character. It is a hierarchy of cultivated taste, which says nothing about the mineral quality of a piece.
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.
