Jade and gold earrings of great simplicity: two jade drops in a soft pale green, capped with a small gold tone cup and hanging from gold tone hooks with a sculpted front. They move at the slightest turn of the head and catch the light.
In four lines
Two jade drops in a pale green, polished like a pebble.
A gold tone cup and gold tone hooks with a sculpted front.
Light, they move with every turn of the head.
No size to choose: a simple gift, and a safe one.
Two jade drops, and nothing more
These jade and gold earrings rest on a simple idea: let the stone speak. Each drop is solid, rounded, polished to a soft shine, and its pale green, between celadon and water green, takes the light without ever shouting. At the edge, where the stone thins out, the green turns almost translucent.
These are earrings you put on in the morning without thinking about it, and that carry a whole day, from the office to dinner.
Gold tone, just enough of it
The metal stays discreet: a small cup tops each drop, and a fine ring links it to the hook. The hook itself has a flattened, curved front face that shines like a stroke of gold above the stone. The whole design lies in that contrast, the milky green below, the golden gleam above.
Earrings that live with you
Hanging, the drops move with every turn of the head and send the light back differently at each moment. They fall just below the lobe: enough to be seen, not enough to get in the way.
Each drop is cut from the stone, and two stones are never quite identical: from one ear to the other, the green may vary by a shade. That is the mark of a pair in stone, not a matching defect.
What to wear them with
They come into their own with the hair tied back or cut short, and over an open collar. Pale green and gold tone like warm shades: off white, beige, camel, tanned skin. For a matching set, they have the same water green and the same gold tone as the jade and gold necklace.
And since there is no size to choose, it is one of the simplest gifts in the shop. Giving a jade piece.
Wearing them, and keeping them beautiful
Take them off to sleep, to shower and for sport: a hook can catch on a pillowcase or a jumper. Put perfume and hairspray on before the earrings. Since the alloy of the hooks is not stated, if your lobes react to certain metals, wear them for a short spell at first.
For care, a soft dry cloth on the metal; for the drops, lukewarm water and a mild soap, without soaking the cup. Never ultrasonics, steam or solvent. Store them together in their pouch, away from other pieces. Care in detail.
Additional information
Stone
Jadeite or nephrite, not resolved
Colour
Water green
Stone shape
Drop
Motif
No motif
Mounting
Ear wire
Metal
Gold tone, alloy not stated
Setting
Bead cap
Worn by
Women
Paired stones
None, jade only
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 earrings
What follows changes register, and I flag it rather than blending it into the rest of the page. Nothing here is demonstrated. These are usages and beliefs, old and documented, that 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 attribute no effect to this one.
A stone of moral virtueIn Confucian thought, jade is associated with qualities of character rather than with effects on the body: uprightness, constancy, restraint. It is the best documented meaning of all.
Jade dewIn classical Chinese, "jade dew" means the dew of autumn, pure and cold. The poet Du Fu opens one of his most famous poems with it. A drop of jade keeps that image.
Three earrings per earUnder the last Chinese dynasty, custom had Manchu women wear three earrings in each ear. Jade there sat alongside gold, pearls and coral.
A green named after a shepherdThe word celadon, which names this pale green, comes from Celadon, a shepherd in L'Astrée, a French novel of the seventeenth century, whom the stage dressed in soft green. The name later passed to Chinese porcelains of the same colour.
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.
