Yellow jade necklace: a pierced disc in a translucent honey yellow, knotted on a braided red cord with white beads and two silver beads. Sliding knot.
Sold subject to weighing. Yellow jade exists, but yellow agate looks very much like it once polished, and I do not separate them by eye.
The disc comes off the cord and the gap is wide, 2.6 against 2.90 at least: this reservation will be lifted, and the figure published. Why I write it down.
A yellow jade necklace: a pierced disc in a translucent honey yellow, knotted on a braided red cord punctuated by white beads and two silver beads. The length is set by a sliding knot. It is the only yellow piece in the catalogue.
In four lines
A pierced disc in a translucent honey yellow, cut from a single stone.
Braided red cord, white and silver beads, sliding knot.
Sold subject to weighing: yellow jade or agate, to be settled.
The gap is wide, 2.6 against 2.90 at least: the figure will decide.
Yellow jade exists, and that is precisely the problem
Yellow jade is not a dealer’s invention. It is a nephrite whose iron gives a honey tint, taken in particular from the rivers of Xinjiang, and it was held in high esteem at the Qing court, just after mutton fat white.
Only here is the thing: yellow agate and yellow chalcedony look enormously like it once cut as a disc and polished. The same honey translucency, the same absence of marked veining, the same behaviour in the light. By eye, in a photograph, I do not separate them, and I am not going to pretend otherwise.
That is why the page is sold under condition, and why the Mineral line of the record writes both names. A shop that sells one stone only must be able to say I do not know yet without ducking the question.
Why this reservation will be lifted
Not all the reservations in this catalogue are equal. Some concern stones set in closed metal, and the figure may never arrive. Here the disc comes off the cord by undoing a knot, and the weighing is therefore certain.
The gap between the candidates is also very comfortable. A chalcedony or an agate runs around 2.60, a quartzite around 2.65, and a nephrite starts at 2.90. There is no grey zone between those values: the result will be readable without interpretation.
The figure will be published in the record with its date, and it will replace the present double mention. The method, with its three limits.
A colour seldom seen, which moves in daylight
Setting the question of the material aside, this stone has a real merit: yellow is rare on a stone piece, and this one is frank without being garish. Under a warm light it turns amber honey, under a grey sky it becomes almost lemon.
The disc is thin enough for the light to pass right through it, and the central hole draws a paler halo when you hold it to the window. It is a piece to look at against the light, far more than a green stone.
Outside Burma, country of extraction not confirmed
What tradition attributes to yellow 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.
The colour of the emperorUnder the Ming and the Qing, yellow was a colour reserved for the sovereign, forbidden to common people for clothing and roofs. A yellow jade was therefore nothing trivial, and court pieces carry the mark of it.
Just after whiteIn the hierarchy of the Xinjiang nephrites, honey yellow came second behind mutton fat white. The connoisseurs' treatises of the Qing rank it so, and the prices of old sales confirm it.
Earth, at the centreIn the system of the five phases, yellow is the colour of earth, and earth occupies the centre rather than a cardinal point. It is a late cosmological reading, applied to jade as to everything else.
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.
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.
