Jade and zircon earrings: a ball of green stone under a collar of openwork petals, hung from a silver tone hook paved with small brilliant cut stones.
Zircon is a natural mineral, not to be confused with cubic zirconia, which is synthetic. My supplier announces zircons, I take up his word and I stop there.
The ball is not set, only threaded: it comes off, so it can be weighed. Why I write it down.
Jade and zircon earrings: a ball of green stone capped with a collar of openwork petals, hung from a silver tone hook whose whole stem is paved with small brilliant cut stones. The light starts at the top and comes down to the ball.
In four lines
A ball of green stone under a collar of openwork petals.
A silver tone hook paved with zircons along the whole stem.
The zircons are not jade, and the page names them.
The record will be published: the ball comes off, so it can be weighed.
Zircon is not a fake diamond
The word drags a bad reputation behind it, and it is half deserved. Two things have to be separated. Zircon is a natural mineral, a zirconium silicate, which exists colourless and has been brilliant cut for centuries: it is a real stone, not an imitation.
Cubic zirconia, on the other hand, is an unrelated synthetic product, created in a laboratory in the nineteen seventies, and it is what is found in the vast majority of cheap jewellery. The two carry almost the same name, which keeps the confusion alive.
My supplier announces zircons. I take up his word and I stop there: I have no means of telling one from the other, and the record writes it as announced. What is certain is that these are not diamonds, and that nobody here claims they are.
A ball under a collar
The stone is not set: it is simply threaded on a post that passes through its drilling, and the collar of openwork petals rests on top of it like a small hat. Nothing grips the ball, nothing glues it.
It is a mounting with two merits. It does not constrain the stone, so there is no risk of its splitting under the pressure of a badly made setting. And it allows the stone to be taken off, so to be weighed, which is not the case for the closed set cabochons in the section.
The drawback is that a threaded ball turns freely on its post. That is not a fault here, since it is round, but it would explain why the collar does not always stay perfectly aligned. All the earrings in the section.
What the weighing will be able to establish
The ball is a frank green, fairly deep, with paler zones that appear against the light. That variation follows the thickness, which is the behaviour of a colour present in the mass rather than laid on the surface.
It is not a proof. 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. On a green of this intensity the gap is clear and the figure will settle it.
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.
A stone that is not facetedJade is never brilliant cut, and that is not a question of fashion: its fibrous structure lacks the transparency that brings a facet alive. The cabochon and the bead are the shapes that suit it, and that is why it stands here beside faceted stones.
Wearing little, and for a long timeThe old usage was not to accumulate: a single piece, kept for decades and often handed on, was worth more than a collection. It is a point on which Chinese tradition and contemporary jewellery do not say the same thing.
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.
