A real jade pendant cut as a rectangular bar, drilled right through and polished on every face. The green is pale and cloudy, deeper in patches, milkier elsewhere. It is strung on a cord, with wooden beads and brass washers.
In four lines
Drilled bar, polished on every face, with no metal at all on the stone.
Strung on a cord, with wooden beads and brass washers.
Bare stone, therefore weighable: the figure will be published here, with its date.
Real means jadeite or nephrite, never serpentine or dyed quartzite.
What real means here, and what it does not mean
A real jade pendant is, on this site, a pendant whose stone is jadeite or nephrite, and not serpentine sold under the name “new jade” or “Korean jade”, nor dyed quartzite sold as “Malaysia jade”. None of those names designates jade.
Real never sets the untreated against the treated. That is the most widespread confusion on the market, and it suits everybody except the buyer. The treatment status of this piece is not determined, it is written in the record, and no word on this page suggests otherwise. What the letters A, B and C cover.
A cloudy green, and why I prefer it to a perfect one
The colour of this bar is not uniform: it advances in patches, deeper in places, almost white elsewhere, with milky passages sometimes called cloudy. That is what a natural material does, where chromium or iron did not distribute themselves to order.
It is not proof, and I will not write it as such: a quartzite can be dyed unevenly, and a nephrite can be remarkably homogeneous. It is simply the opposite of the signal that should alert you, a colour rigorously identical over the whole piece and concentrated around the drill holes. The checks that need no equipment.
Jadeite or nephrite, and why this page does not settle it yet
The two minerals are not related at all: jadeite is a sodium aluminium pyroxene, nephrite a calcium amphibole. It was a Frenchman who separated them, Alexis Damour, in 1863, and it took a laboratory to do it. What sets them apart.
By eye, on a pale cloudy green like this one, the distinction is not reliable. Density, on the other hand, is: the two ranges do not overlap, 3.25 to 3.36 against 2.90 to 3.03. That is the figure the weighing will give, and that is the day the Mineral line of the record will stop saying “or”.
The cord, and what is better known in advance
The bar hangs from a braided cord, assembled with wooden beads, brass washers and a pale jade bead. The cord wears out before the stone, and that is true of every stringing: it can be replaced, and there is nothing abnormal about it. Brass, for its part, takes a patina and darkens with time; that belongs to the metal, it is not a fault. Thread and cord on a jade piece.
A drilled stone carries all its weight on its drill hole. Avoid letting it hang over a sharp edge, and store it flat rather than suspended. Care in detail.
Additional information
Stone
Jadeite or nephrite, not resolved
Colour
Light green
Stone shape
Bar
Motif
No motif
Mounting
Braided cord
Setting
Drilled stone
Worn by
Unisex
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 a jade pendant
What follows changes register, and I flag it rather than blending it into the rest of the page. None of it is proven. These are customs and beliefs, old and documented, which I report because they are part of the history of this stone. No piece of jewellery in this shop is sold as a treatment, and I claim no effect for this one.
The stone worn against the skinJade takes the temperature of the body in a few minutes and keeps it. That is a physical property, conductivity, and several traditions have made something quite different of it. I stay with the first.
The elongated shapeJade bars and cylinders are attested very early in China, often engraved with a short inscription. These ones are plain: the shape comes close to the supports for text without being one.
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.
The Tibetan stringingWooden beads, brass washers and inlaid beads come from a Himalayan vocabulary of mounting, taken up today by the trade. It is a style, not a provenance.
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.
