Raw jade, a block of nephrite broken on every face and never polished. Matte green, white patches, ocher runs of iron oxide.
A rough piece hides nothing: you see the grain of the fracture, the real distribution of the color and the traces of weathering, which polishing closes over. Wet it to see the color a polish would give.
A bare, unpolished stone: it is the object weighing measures best, and the figure will be published here with its date. Treatment status not determined.
A block of raw jade, in nephrite, broken on every face and never polished. The green is matte, without the slightest shine, mixed with white patches and streaked with ocher runs of iron oxide. It is the most honest piece in the catalog: nothing is hidden in it because nothing has been done to it.
In four lines
A block neither cut nor polished, broken on every face.
Matte green, white patches, ocher runs of iron oxide.
A bare, unpolished stone: the object weighing measures best.
A rough piece is not worn. It is an object to hold, to set down, to look at.
What a rough piece shows and a polish hides
Polishing closes the surface of a stone: it erases the grain, evens out the color and gives everything a similar shine. That is what makes jade beautiful, and it is also what makes well-worked serpentine hard to tell from jade in a photo.
A rough piece hides nothing. You see the grain of the fracture, fibrous and catchy on nephrite, glassier and shell-shaped on quartz. You see the real distribution of the color, in patches and veins, without a polish having leveled it. And you see the traces of weathering, here ocher runs of iron oxide, which tell of the stone’s time in the ground.
None of these signs is proof, and I will not present them as such. They only make examination possible, where a polished, mounted object rules it out. The checks that need no equipment.
The matte green, and why it is not disappointing
Raw jade does not shine. The green looks dull, almost powdery, very far from the glow of this shop’s cabochons. It is not a quality flaw, it is the surface finish. The same stone, polished, would light up.
If you want to judge it, wet it: the water fills the tiny irregularities of the fracture and brings out, for a few minutes, roughly the color a polish would give. It is what buyers do at stone markets, and it costs nothing. The colors of jade.
Nephrite, and why it was made into axes
This piece is listed as nephrite, a calcium amphibole, one of the two minerals the word jade covers. The other is jadeite, a pyroxene, and the two are not related at all: Alexis Damour established this in 1863. What sets them apart.
On a raw block, the property that matters can be felt in the hand: jade is tough. Its structure of interlocking fibers resists the spread of a crack, which explains why polished axes were made from it in the Neolithic and why a block this size does not split with one hammer blow. Its hardness, however, is ordinary, 6 to 6.5. The difference between hardness and toughness.
What to do with it
A rough piece is not worn. It is set down, held in the hand, used as a paperweight, a reference sample or a starting point for anyone who wants to have it cut. There is no size to choose, no special care, and no fragile mounting.
A rinse in lukewarm water with a mild soap is enough, with a soft brush for the hollows of the fracture. Never ultrasonic cleaners, never steam, never solvents, as with every piece in this catalog whose treatment status is not determined. Care in detail.
Additional information
Stone
Néphrite
Color
Two tone
Stone shape
Rough stone
Motif
No motif
Mounting
None
Metal
None
Setting
No setting
Worn by
Unisex
Paired stones
None, jade only
Mineral family
Calcic amphibole
Hardness (Mohs)
6 to 6.5
Reference density
2.90 to 3.03 g/cm³
Toughness
Exceptional, interlocking crystals
Treatment
Not determined
Origin
Outside Burma, country of extraction not confirmed
Lead Times
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.
