A jade and sterling silver pendant built around a jadeite drop of a clear, very even green. The stone does not hang beneath a bail: it is held by four claws inside an openwork frame of twisted metal, whose upper loop carries a pavé of small white stones. A chain is included.
In four lines
- Jadeite drop claw set in an openwork frame of sterling silver.
- Pavé of small white stones on the upper loop, not identified.
- Chain included, whose fineness I do not guarantee.
- A clear and very even green: this page discusses it further down.
A drop held by claws, not hung beneath a bail
The difference is not cosmetic. Beneath a bail, a stone is drilled right through or glued to a support, and it bears on a single point. Here, the openwork frame goes right around the drop and small claws fold over its edge, at the top and at the bottom. The drop is not drilled.
That means two things in use. First, the load is spread: the weak point of a drilled pendant, which is the hole, does not exist here. Second, the claws are fine metal that a snag can lift. Run a fingernail over them once a year: a claw that catches the nail is a claw that has opened, and that is the moment to have a jeweller lay it back down, not after the fall.
The frame itself is twisted and openwork, which lets light pass behind the stone. On a translucent jadeite, that is what makes the difference between a green that lights up and a green that stays dull.
This green is very even, and I will say so rather than boast about it
The drop is a clear, saturated green, with no pale patch and no visible vein. That is what makes it beautiful in a photograph, and it is exactly what this site teaches you to look at closely.
A perfectly uniform colour on a natural stone is rare, because chromium did not settle to order. It can come from severe sorting through a large lot, or from a coloured impregnation. I have neither weighed it nor had it analysed, and the treatment status of this piece is not determined, like that of this whole catalogue.
What I refuse to write is the opposite: not “untreated”, not “natural”, not “A jadeite”, not “type A”. Those four words are the ones the market uses exactly when it does not know, and French decree no. 2002-65 makes silence about a treatment an offence, not discretion. What the letters A, B and C cover.
The white stones of the pavé
The upper loop carries very small faceted white stones, bead set. My supplier does not name them. At that diameter, a cubic zirconia, a synthetic spinel, a colourless topaz and a glass look alike to the naked eye as through a pocket loupe.
So I will not call them diamond, or brilliant, or any name of a precious stone. It is article 4 of French decree no. 2002-65 that forbids it: naming an imitation with the name of the stone it imitates is an offence, even with no intent to deceive. On this site, an unidentified stone is called an unidentified stone.
The chain, and what I know about it
A white metal chain comes with the pendant. I do not guarantee that it is sterling silver: my supplier does not specify it, and an accompanying chain is very often silver plated brass. If you want a chain whose fineness is certain, buy it separately from a jeweller and keep this one for trying on.
The bail of the pendant is wide enough to take a thicker chain, a silk cord or a ribbon. The weight of the piece asks for nothing in particular.
Sterling silver, and what it really does
Sterling silver is an alloy of 92.5 per cent silver, the rest being mostly copper. It tarnishes in air, which is normal and comes off with a silver cloth, keeping away from the stone and the pavé. On acidic skin it can also mark, because of the copper: it is rare, it is not a manufacturing fault, and rinsing regularly is usually enough.
Jade, for its part, is tough but its hardness stays ordinary, 6.5 to 7 for jadeite: the quartz in dust, which rates 7, dulls a domed drop far more surely than a knock. An openwork frame holds water behind the stone: dry it thoroughly, flat, on a cloth. Never ultrasonic, never steam, never solvent: ultrasound loosens the claws and dislodges the beads of the pavé. Hardness and toughness, and care in detail.
