A jade tube pendant: a short cylinder of deep olive green, polished all over, drilled lengthwise and threaded on a fine brown cord. No mount, no decorative clasp, nothing but the stone and the thread.
In four lines
A polished cylinder, drilled lengthwise, threaded on a cord.
Deep olive green, with small black specks in the mass.
No mount, no metal: nothing to tarnish, nothing to maintain.
The record will be published: the stone slides off, so it weighs.
The black specks are good news
The stone carries a few black flecks, sharp, about the size of a pinhead. I have not erased them from the photographs, and I am not going to apologise for them either: on a nephrite, these dark inclusions are common and they argue in the stone’s favour.
The reason is simple. They are grains of another mineral trapped while the rock formed, most often a chromium or iron oxide. A glass paste has none, a dyed quartzite would have masked them, and a perfectly even colour is more suspect than a broken one.
That does not make a proof, and the page will never say so. It is one more clue, to set beside the weighing when it is done. How to judge the quality of a jade.
The plainest pendant in the shop
There is nothing more to say about the shape, and that is precisely the point of the piece. A cylinder, a hole, a cord. No carved subject, no deity, no sign to explain, nothing that commits the wearer to anything.
The cord is fine and brown, with no visible metal clasp. If it breaks it is replaced for a few euros at any haberdasher: the stone, for its part, does not wear out. The thread and the cord of a jade piece.
What the stone is, and what remains to be established
The green is olive, fairly dark, and it is a colour to look at closely: a muted olive green is the type colour of serpentine, which circulates more than any other stone under the name jade. I say so here rather than leave it to be guessed.
The gap in density is fortunately wide: serpentine sits around 2.6, nephrite starts at 2.90. This is the kind of case the weighing settles without discussion, and on this reference it is immediate since the stone slides off the cord.
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.
A man's stone, and long has beenJade is nothing like a feminine ornament in ancient China: belt plaques, archer's thumb rings and rank pendants were men's objects. The present division is recent, and largely Western.
The tube and the discBeside the round disc, ancient tombs yield jade tubes, often square outside and round inside. A late reading makes them the image of the earth against the heaven of the disc. This tube is round, and it is a form of jewellery, not of ritual.
What you do not seeIn the scholar's taste, a jade without decoration was worth more than a carved one: the quality of the material had to be enough. The plainest pieces were often the dearest, and a bare object leaves nothing to hide behind.
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.
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.
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.
