Jade fox pendant: the animal carved seated in the round, tail swept up along the flank. Almost no engraved line, everything is made by the curve. Knotted to a strand of green and black beads.
An entirely smooth piece: it does not catch in loops of wool, does not hold dust, and cleans with a wipe of a cloth.
The beads of the strand are not announced as jade, and the page says so. The stone unties, so it weighs: the record will be published. Why I write it down.
A jade fox pendant: the animal is carved seated, in the round, muzzle turned to one side and tail swept up along the flank to the shoulder. Almost no engraved line, everything is made by the curve. It is knotted to a strand of green and black beads.
In four lines
A seated fox carved in the round, tail along the flank.
Almost no engraving: the shape is made by curve and polish alone.
A small piece, very smooth: nothing catches on clothing.
The record will be published: the stone unties, so it weighs.
A carving without a single burin stroke
Look at the piece closely: there is almost no engraved line. No fur, no hollowed eyes, no claws. The muzzle, the ears and the tail exist only through volume, through the way the stone was cut away and then rounded.
That is a harder choice than it sounds. Engraving rescues an approximate shape: a few well placed strokes make an animal readable even on a badly roughed out block. Here there is nothing to rescue it, the curve has to be right first time.
The result is an entirely smooth piece, with no ridge and no hollow. It does not hold dust, it does not catch in the loops of a jumper, and it cleans with a wipe of a cloth. How to clean a jade stone.
The fox, a motif that is not innocent
It is worth saying: in China the fox is not a neutral animal. The huli jing, the fox spirit, runs through the whole of classical literature as a figure of seduction and cunning, able to take human form. This is not an image of innocence.
The meaning has two faces, though, and the older one is favourable: the nine tailed fox of Mount Tu is, in the earliest texts, an omen of a good marriage and a prosperous dynasty. The uneasy reading came later, mostly under the Ming and the Qing.
Today the motif is sold above all as a charm for allure and encounters, and that is the reading you will find everywhere. I report it as it stands, as a contemporary belief, not as a property of the stone. Jade as a lucky charm, and what that is worth.
What the stone is, and what remains to be established
The green is frank, fairly even, with a mirror polish that returns the light along the whole curve of the back. A polish of that quality on a domed shape calls for a tough material that does not flake under the wheel: that is a point in favour of jade, but serpentine polishes well too.
Only the density settles it without a laboratory. What is sold under the name jade is very often serpentine, around 2.6, or dyed quartzite, around 2.65, while nephrite starts at 2.90.
Outside Burma, country of extraction not confirmed
What tradition attributes to the fox and 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.
An omen, then a demonIn the oldest texts, the nine tailed fox of Mount Tu announces a happy marriage and a lasting dynasty. The figure darkens under the Ming and the Qing, where it becomes the seducing spirit of the tales. Two opposite readings, and the second has erased the first.
The fox of the talesStrange Tales from a Chinese Studio, Pu Songling's collection of the seventeenth century, is full of vixens who take human form. They are rarely wicked there, and often more loyal than the humans they keep company with.
A charm for encountersIn contemporary use the fox pendant is sold as an amulet for allure and for meeting people. It is a recent and very widespread belief, which owes much to commerce and nothing to the ancient texts.
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.
