Water — Green
翠 · Cui
The benchmark and the price-setter. Judged on pure hue with no grey or blue cast, high saturation, and colour that travels evenly rather than pooling in patches.
The Stone
How to read a jade
Jadeite is graded by eye, in daylight, by people who have looked at a great deal of it. Here is what they are looking at — so you can look at it too.
First, A Distinction
Two different minerals share one English word
Nephrite is the older jade — the soft, waxy, spinach-green and mutton-fat white stone carved in China for over five thousand years. It is tough, warm and historically the more revered of the two.
Jadeite arrived from Myanmar in the eighteenth century and is what almost everyone now means by "jade jewelry". It is harder, denser, takes a glassier polish, and occurs in a far wider range of colours — including the vivid green that commands the highest prices of any coloured gemstone on earth.
Everything YUNORA sells is jadeite. Everything on this page refers to jadeite.
Colour — 色
Five colours,
five elements
Jadeite comes out of the ground green, yellow, red, white and black. Each of those five had a meaning long before anyone was grading gemstones, and the meanings are still how the trade talks about the stone.
Earth — Yellow
黄翡 · Huang Fei
Honey through amber, formed where iron seeped into the stone near the surface of the deposit. Warmer against most skin than green, and considerably better value.
Fire — Red
红翡 · Hong Fei
The scarcest warm tone, and the one most often faked with heat or dye. Genuine red is a surface-skin colour, so it appears as a layer rather than throughout — a good carver plans around that.
Air — White
白翡 · Bai Fei
Judged almost entirely on translucency rather than colour. Fine white jadeite is what carvers reach for, because nothing distracts from the form.
Mystery — Black
墨翠 · Mo Cui
Black in the hand, deep green when a torch is held behind it — the test that separates real 墨翠 from black nephrite or dyed material. Rare in fine grades and rising fast.
Two more sit between the five: icy green (冰种) — pale colour with exceptional water — and lavender (紫罗兰), the softest natural hue and the one most often enhanced. Neither is a sixth element; both are readings of the first four.
Texture & Translucency
The trade calls it
“kind” and “water”
种 (zhǒng), "kind" describes grain: how fine the interlocking crystals are. The finest material is called glass kind — no visible structure at all, even in raking light. Below it sit ice kind, glutinous kind and bean kind, in descending order of fineness.
水 (shuǐ), "water" describes translucency: how far light travels into the stone before it stops. Measured in the trade by how many millimetres deep you can still see. Good water is why fine jadeite appears lit from within rather than merely polished.
Between two stones of equal colour, water decides the price. Between two stones of equal water, colour does. Almost nobody gets both.
Grading
A, B, C — a warning
disguised as a scale
These letters describe treatment, not quality. A modest Grade A stone is worth keeping. A spectacular Grade B stone is worth very little.
| Grade | Treatment | What happens over time |
|---|---|---|
| A | None. Natural stone, cut and polished with wax only. | Stable indefinitely. Lustre deepens with wear. This is the only grade that holds value, and the only grade we sell. |
| B | Acid-bleached to remove brown staining, then impregnated with polymer resin to restore structure. | Looks convincing when new. The resin yellows and crazes within roughly five to fifteen years, and the stone cannot be restored. |
| C | Dyed to add or deepen colour, often alongside B treatment. | Colour fades with UV exposure and can leach with heat or solvents. Under magnification the dye pools along crystal boundaries. |
| B + C | Both bleached-and-filled and dyed. | The bulk of inexpensive "jade" sold to travellers. Priced as fine jade, worth ornamental value at best. |
Ask for the report
Any legitimate seller can produce an independent laboratory report naming the stone and confirming "no indication of treatment". If it takes more than a moment to produce, walk away.
Listen to a bangle
Suspended on a thread and tapped with another piece of jade, Grade A rings with a long clear tone. Resin-filled stone gives a short dull click. Useful, though not conclusive on its own.
Distrust the bargain
Fine jadeite has been expensive for two hundred years and there is no undiscovered supply. A vivid green bangle at a few hundred dollars is telling you exactly what it is.
Choosing
Buying your first piece
Decide between colour and water
Budget rarely stretches to both. If you want a piece that reads as jewelry across a room, buy colour. If you want a piece that rewards being looked at closely, buy water. Our Harmony collection leans to the first, Cloud to the second.
Get the bangle size right before anything else
A bangle must pass the widest part of the hand with the thumb tucked in, then sit loose enough to rotate. Too large and it will find an edge and break. Measure with a paper gauge, not a guess — we will send you one.
Look at it in daylight, on your own skin
Retail lighting is tuned to flatter green. Jadeite that looks extraordinary in a case can look grey by a window. Every piece we ship can be returned within thirty days for this exact reason.
Buy the piece, not the investment
Top-grade jadeite has appreciated dramatically, but that market is measured in six figures and traded privately. Buy something you want to wear. Anything beyond that is a bonus, not a plan.
Care
Jade improves with wearing
There is a Chinese expression — 人养玉，玉养人 — the person nourishes the jade and the jade nourishes the person. In practice this means: wear it.
Cleaning
Warm water, a drop of mild soap, a soft brush, then dry with a lint-free cloth. Never an ultrasonic cleaner or a steamer — both can open an existing internal fracture you cannot see.
Avoid
Perfume, hairspray, chlorinated pools, household bleach and prolonged high heat. Put jade on last when dressing and take it off first.
Storing
Alone, in the pouch it arrived in. Jadeite is hard enough to scratch most things in a jewelry box, and a sapphire or diamond is hard enough to scratch it back.
Servicing
Silk cord stretches; have pendants restrung every two to three years. We restring, re-polish and repair YUNORA pieces for as long as you own them.