Gold plated jade earrings: a large ball of water green stone hung from a wide flat gilt hook, curved over the top of the ear.
The plating is announced by my supplier, with no thickness specified. Elsewhere in this catalogue, when nothing is announced, I simply write gold tone, and the page says so.
The stone is the largest in the section, which will make the weighing more reliable than elsewhere. Why I write it down.
Gold plated jade earrings: a large ball of water green stone, smooth and domed, hung from a wide flat gilt hook that curves over the whole top of the ear. The stone is the largest in the earring section, and it is seen from a distance.
In four lines
A large water green ball, the biggest stone in the section.
A wide flat gilt hook, curved over the top of the ear.
Gold plated as announced by my supplier, thickness not specified.
The record will be published: the ball comes off, so it can be weighed.
Gold plating announced, and what that is worth
My supplier announces a gold plating. I take up his word, and I stop exactly where what I know stops. A plating is a thickness, and a thickness is measured in microns: it is what separates a gilding that lasts years from one that lasts months. That thickness is not specified.
On the other pieces in this catalogue my supplier announces nothing at all, and I then simply write gold tone. The difference between the two pages is not cosmetic: here there is a declaration, elsewhere there is none, and the record says so in those terms.
In practise a plating wears first at the points of friction, and on an ear hook that is the top of the curve, where it bears. Take the earrings off before showering and store them flat: that is all that prolongs a gilding. How to store a jade piece.
The same model exists in silver
This ball is sold under two mounts, and that is the only difference between the two references: the silver version carries exactly the same stone under a silver hook of the same design.
The choice is made on complexion more than on quality. Gold warms a darker or golden skin, silver brightens a fair or pink skin, and there is no difference of strength between the two: the hook is hollow in both cases.
If you are hesitating, simply look at the pieces you already wear. Mixing the two metals works very well, but not on the same ear.
A large stone, and a good measurement
The ball is clearly larger than those of the other pairs in the section, and that has an unexpected consequence: the weighing will be more reliable here. The heavier a sample, the less noisy the measurement, and it is one of the three limits of the method that fades away here.
The green is pale, milky, with a translucency that shows clearly around the drilling. That variation follows the thickness, which is the behaviour of a colour present in the mass rather than laid on the surface.
What is sold under the name of jade is very often serpentine, around 2.6, or dyed quartzite, around 2.65, when nephrite starts at 2.90. The figure will be published in the record with its date. The method, with its three limits, and what separates the two minerals.
Additional information
Stone
Jadeite or nephrite, not resolved
Colour
Water green
Stone shape
Round beads
Motif
No motif
Mounting
Ear wire
Metal
Gold tone, alloy not stated
Setting
Drilled stone
Worn by
Women
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 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.
Jade at the earsThe jueshi, slit jade rings worn at the ear, are among the oldest known Chinese ornaments: examples are found in Neolithic burials, long before the discs and the belt pendants.
Gold and stoneGold long counted for less than jade in the Chinese hierarchy of materials: a proverb says that gold has a price where jade has none. Mounting a stone in a precious metal is a habit more Western than Chinese.
The water green of scholarly tasteVery pale jades were long preferred to vivid greens in cultivated Chinese taste, where discretion counts more than brilliance. The fashion for intense green is recent, and largely commercial.
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.
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.
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.
