A green jade ring, a round cabochon bezel set on a fine sterling silver band. A solid polished dome, with no facets: the green deepens around the rim and lightens at the top.
It is taken at the finger circumference, and the European size is that circumference in millimeters. Between two sizes, take the larger: the band being silver, it can be resized. The size guide.
Set, therefore unweighable: the metal skews hydrostatic weighing, and no figure will be published on this listing. Treatment status not determined. Why I write it.
A green jade ring with a round cabochon, bezel set on a fine sterling silver band. The dome is polished solid, with no facets: the green reads as one block, darker around the rim, lighter at the top where the light passes through.
In four lines
A round cabochon, bezel set on a fine sterling silver band.
Taken at the finger circumference. The European size is that circumference in millimeters.
A green jade ring whose mineral is named. Neither serpentine, nor dyed quartzite.
Set, therefore unweighable: no figure will be published, and the page says so.
The bezel setting, and what it prevents
A bezel setting is a band of metal folded over the whole rim of the stone. It is the safest setting for a cabochon: no claw catches, no edge sticks out, and the jade is held through 360 degrees. On a working hand, that is what separates a stone that stays from a stone that goes.
It has a price, and the price falls on me. Enclosed in the silver, the stone can no longer be weighed: hydrostatic weighing compares a mass in air with a mass in water, and the metal, whose density is not that of jade, enters into both. The figure obtained would say nothing. It is the only method I practice, and it stops here. Why I weigh, and what weighing does not say.
How to take your size
The European size is the finger circumference in millimeters, and that is a piece of luck: a 54 measures 54 mm around the inside, nothing to convert. Measure with a tailor’s tape or a strip of paper, at the end of the day rather than on waking, since the finger is thinner in the morning. If you hesitate between two, take the larger: the band is silver, it can be resized by a jeweler, which a ring carved from solid stone never allows. The size guide.
A clear green, and where it comes from
The green of jadeite comes from chromium, where nephrite’s comes from iron and pulls toward spinach. The two minerals are unrelated: jadeite is a pyroxene, nephrite an amphibole, and it was a Frenchman who separated them, Alexis Damour, in 1863. What tells them apart.
On this cabochon, the green reads as one block because the dome is polished solid and without facets. It deepens around the rim, where the thickness crossed is greatest, and lightens at the top. Translucency produces that effect, and translucency is what one looks at first on a jade, before the color itself.
Why I write green jade ring, and not simply jade ring
Because the word jade, on its own, says very little. What is sold under that name is very often serpentine, labeled “new jade” or “Korean jade”, or dyed quartzite, sold as “Malaysia jade”. None of those names designates jade.
On a bare stone, the scale settles it: the four reference figures above are separated by far more than the uncertainty of a kitchen scale. On a set stone it settles nothing, and this page writes that instead of letting you believe otherwise. It is also why I put the words certified, guaranteed or appraised on none of my pages: I weigh, I do not certify.
Additional information
Stone
Jadéite
Color
Clear green
Stone shape
Cabochon
Motif
No motif
Mounting
Metal band
Metal
Sterling silver 925
Setting
Bezel set
Worn by
Women
Mineral family
Sodium aluminum pyroxene
Hardness (Mohs)
6.5 to 7
Reference density
3.25 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 ring
What follows changes register, and I flag it rather than blending it into the rest of the page. Nothing here is demonstrated. These are usages and beliefs, old and documented, that I report because they are part of the history of this stone. No piece of jewelry in this shop is sold as a treatment, and I attribute no effect to this one.
The scholar's ringIn imperial China, the jade ring was also worn as a mark of rank and of study, not only as an ornament. It is the usage best attested by surviving objects.
A stone of moral virtueIn Confucian thought, jade is associated with qualities of character rather than with effects on the body: uprightness, constancy, restraint. It is the best documented meaning of all.
Green and growthClear green is, in several Asian traditions, the color of what grows and renews itself. The association is old and broad; it says nothing about the stone itself.
The receiving handAs with the bangle, several traditions distinguish the left hand from the right, one receiving and the other giving. The usage is widespread; it is known to have no basis other than custom.
Shipped within 48 hours of your order being confirmed, for delivery within 14 days from the day it ships. I keep no buffer stock, and I will not promise a date I cannot meet.
Shipping Costs
€6.99 no matter the destination, and free on orders of €47 or more to France, Belgium, Switzerland, and Luxembourg. The exact amount shows in your cart before you pay.
The Packaging, and Why It Matters
Every piece leaves in its own pouch, kept apart from the others. This is not about presentation: jade’s hardness is ordinary, 6 to 6.5 for nephrite and 6.5 to 7 for jadeite, and the quartz in everyday dust rates 7. Two pieces of jewelry that travel together arrive scratched.
Fourteen Days to Change Your Mind
No reason needed. One email opens a return, and there is no form to fill out. Return shipping is at your expense, unless the piece does not match its listing or arrives damaged.
Getting the size wrong is the leading cause of returns in this category, and jade cannot be resized the way a solid metal band can. Two minutes of measuring almost always prevents it. The size guide.
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 cleaner, no steam, no solvent, no heat source. The reason is not caution for its own sake: the treatment status of my pieces is undetermined. My supplier cannot tell me, and the weighing establishes the mineral without saying anything about a possible resin impregnation. Resin withstands neither heat nor solvents, so every piece is handled as though it might contain some. The treatment information page.
The Scratch, and Where It Comes From
Jade is tough, meaning very hard to break: its structure of interlocking crystals resists cracking, and that is what made it possible to turn it into axes in the Neolithic. Its hardness, on the other hand, is ordinary, 6 to 6.5 for nephrite and 6.5 to 7 for jadeite. The quartz in everyday dust rates 7, and that is what dulls a jade, not impacts. The difference between the two.
Day to Day
Put the piece on after perfume and lotion, never before. Take it off for housework, gardening, and sports, where the hard knocks happen. Store each piece on its own, in its pouch. On a strand of beads, the thread wears out before the stone does: it gets restrung, and there is nothing abnormal about that.
My name is Jade. I am French, from Morbihan in Brittany, and I live in Tallinn. I choose the pieces and have them set: I mine nothing, I carve nothing, and I do not do the metalwork myself. What I bring is the sorting, and with this material the sorting decides everything.
I am not a gemologist, a lapidary, or a therapist, and I do not claim to be.
I Weigh, I Do Not Certify
Before putting a reference online, I order one example of it for myself. When it reaches me unset, 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 reference, and not every piece. I never handle the piece that ships to you, and I would rather say so plainly than let anyone believe otherwise. The method, with its three limitations.
What I Cannot Know
The treatment status of my pieces. My supplier cannot tell me, and neither can the scale: it establishes the mineral, not the resin impregnation. Only laboratory infrared spectroscopy would settle the question, and I do not have that testing done. So you will never read “jadeite A”, “type A” or “untreated” on this site. The information page.
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 October 7, 2016. What applies today dates from April 8, 2021: the US Treasury sanctioned Myanma Gems Enterprise, the state-owned company that controls the Burmese gem trade. So there is no blanket ban, but an American is not allowed to do business with that entity, and a stone never tells you where it has been. I run one supply chain for ten markets, and it has to stand up to the strictest one. When an origin is not confirmed to me in writing, the listing does not state it. My origin policy.
