Black Jade Band Ring, Solid and Carved from One Block
50,90 €
Black jade band ring: a solid band cut from one block, with no mount, no seam and no metal.
The black is not even, it is marbled with grey, and that is a good sign: dyed onyx, which is the commonest confusion, gives a flat and perfectly regular black.
Bare stone, so nothing hinders the weighing and the record will be published. A stone ring cannot be resized. The size guide.
A black jade band ring: a solid band cut from one block, with no mount, no seam and no metal. The black is not even, it is marbled with light grey, and that is precisely what tells a dark nephrite from a dyed onyx.
In four lines
A solid band in bare stone: no mount, no seam, no metal.
A black marbled with grey, never the same from one piece to the next.
It cannot be resized: a stone ring does not adjust.
The record will be published: nothing hinders the weighing here.
Black jade, and how it is told from onyx
Black jade is generally a nephrite heavily loaded with iron and graphite. It is not an ink black: seen under raking light it reveals grey patches, lighter clouds, sometimes a very dark green ground that only appears against the light.
Dyed onyx, which is the commonest confusion, gives a flat and perfectly even black. It is a porous chalcedony blackened with sugar and acid, an old and stable process, and the result is uniform by construction.
So on this reference the marbling is a good sign, not a flaw. A black band of perfect regularity would be more worrying than this one. The densities, for their part, separate clearly: nephrite from 2.90 to 3.03, chalcedony around 2.6.
A ring that cannot be adjusted
The ring is not a metal shank carrying a stone: the stone is the band, cut and drilled in one piece. Jade allows that because it is tough, its interlocked crystals resisting the spread of a crack. The difference between hardness and toughness.
The consequence is practical: a stone ring cannot be resized. No filing, no tightening, no stretching. It has to be right first time. Remember that fingers swell with heat and at the end of the day: half a size too large is easier to live with than half a size too small. The size guide.
It also breaks if it falls on a tiled floor. Tough does not mean unbreakable, and a ring is still a ring.
A black that does not wear like a green
This is the only frankly unisex piece in the ring section, and the one that goes best with a steel watch or a leather strap. The black keeps at a distance everything decorative that jade green drags along with it: it is noticed for its shape, not for its colour.
The upkeep is the simplest in the catalogue. No metal to polish, no claw to watch, no openwork to rinse: a soft cloth and lukewarm water. Only avoid knocks on hard corners, which remain the one real risk.
Outside Burma, country of extraction not confirmed
What tradition attributes to black 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.
Black jade, poorly documentedClassical Chinese sources say far less about black jade than about white or green. It appears mainly in utilitarian objects and in a few ritual pieces, and the symbolic readings offered for it today are modern reconstructions.
The thumb ringThe oldest Chinese jade ring is not an ornament: it is the thumb ring that protected an archer's hand from the bowstring. It became a mark of rank under the Qing, worn by men who had never drawn a bow. What tradition puts into a jade bracelet.
The jade you patinate by handChinese usage holds that a jade worn every day becomes warmer and brighter with the years. What changes is the surface, polished by friction and by the natural oils of the skin: the effect is real, the explanation is mechanical.
White before greenCultivated Chinese taste long placed white nephrite at the top, well above green. The present hierarchy comes from the trade in Burmese jadeite, from the eighteenth century onward, and it is a matter of fashion rather than of quality.
Dispatch within 48 hours of your order being confirmed, for delivery within 14 days from dispatch. I keep no stock in reserve, and I will not promise a date I could not meet.
Shipping Costs
€6.99 whatever the destination, free on orders over €47 to France, Belgium, Switzerland and Luxembourg. The exact amount is shown in your basket before you pay.
The Packaging, and Why It Matters
Every piece travels in its own pouch, kept apart from the others. This is not a question of presentation: the hardness of jade is unremarkable, between 6 and 6.5 for nephrite and 6.5 to 7 for jadeite, and the quartz in ordinary household dust sits at 7. Two pieces of jewellery that travel together arrive marked.
Fourteen Days to Change Your Mind
No need to give a reason. An email is enough to open a return; there is no form to fill in. Return postage is at your expense, unless the piece does not match its listing or arrives damaged.
Getting the size wrong is the most common reason for a return in this category, and jade cannot be resized the way a solid metal band can. Two minutes spent measuring almost always avoids it. The size guide.
Lukewarm water, mild soap, a soft cloth. A very soft brush for the hollows of a carving. That is all, and it is enough.
What You Must Never Do, and Why
No ultrasonic cleaners, no steam, no solvents, no heat source. This is not a precaution for show: the treatment status of my pieces is undetermined. My supplier does not know it, and weighing identifies the mineral without telling me anything about a possible resin impregnation. Resin withstands 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 difficult to break: its structure of interlocking crystals resists cracking, and that is what made it usable for axe heads in the Neolithic. Its hardness, by contrast, is unremarkable, 6 to 6.5 for nephrite and 6.5 to 7 for jadeite. The quartz in ordinary household dust sits at 7: that is what dulls a 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 knocks against hard edges are common. 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. French, from Morbihan, living in Tallinn. I choose the pieces and have them mounted: I mine nothing, I cut nothing, and the metalwork is not done by my hand. What I bring is the selection, and with this material that is what decides everything.
I am not a gemmologist, not a lapidary, not a therapist, and I do not claim to be.
I Weigh, I Do Not Certify
Before a listing goes online, I order one example of it for myself. When it reaches me unmounted, 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 listing, and not every piece. I do not handle the piece that is sent to you, and I would rather write that down than let you believe otherwise. The method, with its three limits.
What I Cannot Know
The treatment status of my pieces. My supplier does not know it, and the scales do not tell me: they identify the mineral, not the resin impregnation. Only infrared spectroscopy in a laboratory would settle it, and I do not have that done. So you will never read “Grade A jadeite”, “Type A” or “untreated” on this site. The information sheet.
Where My Jade Comes From
No Burmese jadeite, and the first reason is legal. Not the one you read everywhere: the JADE Act of 2008 did 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 company that controls the Burmese gem trade. So there is no blanket ban, but a US person is not allowed to trade with that entity, and a stone never tells you where it has been. A single supply chain serves ten markets, so it has to hold up in the most demanding of them. When an origin is not confirmed to me in writing, the listing does not state it. My origin charter.
