Jade keychain: a vivid green pierced disc, knotted onto a braided brown cord, with small green beads and a bead carved into petals.
A loop of cord for your key ring or the handle of a bag. Tough, it lives happily in a pocket; over the years, its polish softens, marked by dust more than by keys.
A jade keychain to take everywhere: a pierced disc in vivid green, hanging from a braided brown cord, with small green beads and a bead carved into petals. A loop of cord attaches it to your key ring or the handle of a bag.
In four lines
A vivid green pierced disc, knotted onto a braided cord.
Green beads and a bead carved into petals.
A loop of cord for your key ring or bag.
A tough jade, made to live in a pocket.
Jade to take everywhere
This jade keychain is the simplest way to have jade with you every day, without wearing jewellery. It goes with your house keys, slips onto the handle of a bag or a school bag, and you find it again every time you reach into your pocket.
Its vivid green, luminous disc catches the eye in the middle of a bunch of keys, and light shines through it at its thinnest edges.
The disc, the beads and the knots
Everything is mounted on cord, with no metal at all. At the top, a loop of braided cord in dark brown, which slips through a key ring or around a handle. Below it, a dark bead, then a bead carved into petals, reddish brown and cream, framed by two small green beads.
The disc is knotted onto the cord through its central hole, and the cord continues into two tassels, each ending in two green beads that clink gently together. It is Chinese knotwork, simple and sturdy.
Made to last, and what to know about wear
A keychain is about the most roughly treated object there is. Nephrite belongs here: its interwoven fibers give it remarkable toughness, and a thick disc with no sharp edges takes the knocks of a key ring well. Your keys, usually brass, are in fact softer than jade.
What marks jade is whatever is harder than it: the quartz in sand and dust, which rates 7 while nephrite rates 6 to 6.5. Over the years, the polish of a keychain carried in a pocket softens and picks up fine marks. That is the trace of use, and it is what makes it yours. Hardness and toughness, the difference.
On your keys, on your bag, or as a gift
It goes onto a key ring or around a bag handle in a second, and comes off just as fast. With no size and no gender, it is an easy little gift for someone who does not wear jewellery but would like to carry a bit of jade. Giving jade.
Care
The cord is what wears first: when it weakens, it is easy to redo, and the disc can be restrung. For the stone and the beads, a soft cloth, and from time to time a little lukewarm soapy water. Never ultrasonic cleaners, steam or solvents.Care in detail, and jadeite or nephrite, what sets them apart.
Additional information
Stone
Néphrite
Colour
Clear green
Stone shape
Pierced disc
Motif
No motif
Mounting
Braided cord
Metal
None
Setting
Drilled stone
Worn by
Unisex
Paired stones
Carved bead, not identified, Green beads, not identified
Mineral family
Calcic amphibole
Hardness (Mohs)
6 to 6.5
Reference density
2.90 to 3.03 g/cm³
Toughness
Exceptional, interlocking crystals
Treatment
Not determined
Origin
Outside Burma, country of extraction not confirmed
What tradition attributes to the jade you carry
What follows shifts register, and I say so rather than blending it into the rest of the page. None of it is proven. These are customs and images, old and documented, that I report because they are part of this stone’s history. No object in this shop is sold as a remedy or a good luck charm, and I attribute no effect to this one.
A stone of moral virtueIn Confucian thought, jade is associated with qualities of character rather than effects on the body: integrity, constancy, restraint. It is the best documented meaning of all.
The Chinese knotThe art of decorative knots is old in China, and a cord knotted from a single piece, with no visible beginning or end, is an image of union and continuity there. It appears on pendants, fans and travel charms.
The lotus petalsThe bead carved into petals recalls the lotus, which Chinese tradition admires because it rises from the mud without being stained by it. An 11th-century scholar, Zhou Dunyi, wrote a short text about it that has stayed famous.
Jade that takes on a patinaIn China, people say that jade kept on you for a long time and handled every day takes on a polish no display case will ever give it. A keychain may well be the jade you touch most often.
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.
