Jade and Sterling Silver Earrings with a Large Bead
50,90 €
Jade and sterling silver earrings: a large ball of water green stone hung from a wide flat silver hook, curved over the top of the ear.
925 is not a label but a proportion, 925 thousandths of pure silver. My supplier announces it, I have not checked a hallmark, and the record writes it so.
The wide hook spreads the weight over the whole ear instead of pressing on the lobe. Why I write it down.
Jade and sterling silver earrings: a large ball of water green stone, smooth and domed, hung from a wide flat silver hook that curves over the whole top of the ear. The mount is announced as sterling silver 925 by my supplier.
In four lines
A large water green ball, the biggest stone in the section.
A wide flat silver hook, curved over the top of the ear.
Sterling silver 925 announced by my supplier, hallmark not verified.
The record will be published: the ball comes off, so it can be weighed.
Sterling 925 announced, and what that means
The number 925 is not a label of quality, it is a proportion: 925 thousandths of pure silver to 75 thousandths of another metal, most often copper, which hardens the alloy because pure silver is too soft for a piece of jewellery. That is what is called sterling silver.
My supplier announces it, and I take up his word. I have not checked a hallmark, and that is why the record writes announced, not verified. On most of the other pieces in this catalogue he announces nothing at all, and I then simply write silver tone: the difference between the two pages is real.
What a sterling silver changes day to day: it tarnishes. That is a reaction with the sulphur in the air, not wear, and it comes off with a silver cloth. A silver tone metal would lose its layer instead of taking a patina. How to clean jade.
A wide hook, and why that is comfortable
The hook is not a round wire: it is a flat, wide band that follows the top of the ear over several centimetres. The weight is therefore spread along all that length instead of pressing on a single point of the lobe.
On a stone this large that really counts. A ball of this diameter at the end of a thin fish hook would end by pulling and enlarging the hole; here it is worn a whole day without discomfort.
The counterpart is that an open hook of this kind does not lock. It stays in place by its own curve, but it can come out if it is caught in a scarf. The same ball is sold under a gilt mount: the gold plated version, of identical design. All the earrings in the section.
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
Sterling silver 925
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.
Silver in ChinaSilver served as money far more than as adornment in imperial China: the hoof shaped ingots, the sycees, settled taxes. Mounting it as jewellery with a stone is a late usage, come with Western trade.
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.
