Jade drop earrings: an oval water green cabochon, closed set in the hollow of a gilt mount shaped like an elongated petal whose lower point is paved with small pale stones. They close with a lever back, the safest fastening there is.
In four lines
An oval water green cabochon, closed set in a gilt petal.
The lower point paved with small pale stones, not announced.
Lever back fastening: they cannot fall off on their own.
The record will stay empty: a closed setting forbids weighing.
The lever back, and why it is the right fastening
The hook tilts and clips into a small housing behind the lobe. That system is called a lever back, because you could sleep in it without losing it, and it is by far the safest fastening for drop earrings.
Compare it with the simple hook, an open fish hook, found on most of the drops in this catalogue: it unhooks at an unlucky movement, in a scarf or a roll neck. A lever back does not unhook, and that is a real reason to choose this model rather than another.
Its other advantage is that it holds the piece straight against the lobe instead of letting it pivot. The drop stays facing forward, and the pave returns the light in the right place. All the earrings in the section.
Why this page will carry no figure
The stone is held by a closed setting, a collar of metal folded down over the whole edge of the cabochon. It is the setting that best protects a domed stone, and it is also the one that makes it impossible to take out.
To weigh it you would have to open the collar along its whole length, so deform an openwork mount that does not come back into shape cleanly. I am not going to damage a piece to obtain a figure, and I prefer to write that limit rather than pass over it in silence.
The Mineral line of the record will therefore say what my supplier announces, and nothing more. It is flagged as not established, and it will stay so on this reference. The method, with its three limits.
What the stone shows all the same
A closed setting does not stop you looking. The cabochon is a pale, frankly translucent water green: the light passes through it and lights the metal from below, which gives the piece its almost milky look.
That translucency is a good sign, without proving anything: fine serpentine lets the light through too. The colour, on the other hand, is soft and a little irregular, with paler zones, and that is not what a dye gives, since a dye looks for uniformity and brilliance.
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.
The drop, a shape with no messageThe drop silhouette has no reading of its own in the Chinese tradition, where it is the carved motifs that carry meaning. It is a shape of jewellery, widespread everywhere, and there is nothing more to say about it.
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.
