Shop jade-named beads for jewelry making, from soft greens and creams to sunny yellows and dyed brights. Explore faceted rondelles, smooth rounds, cubes, heishi discs and hearts, sold by the strand.
True jade is two different minerals. Jadeite is a sodium aluminum silicate with a granular structure — 6.5 to 7 on the Mohs scale, a glassy luster, and the widest color range, including lavender, orange, red and the rare Imperial green. Nephrite is a calcium magnesium iron silicate built from tightly interwoven fibers — slightly softer at 6 to 6.5, but tougher and harder to chip, with a waxy luster and quieter greens, creams, browns and blacks. Jadeite is the rarer and costlier of the two and comes mainly from Myanmar; nephrite is more widely available, from Canada, Russia, China and New Zealand. Telling the two apart for certain takes gemological testing, not a look.
Many beads sold as “jade” are neither. A color word in front of “jade” is usually a trade name for a different stone. Lemon jade, yellow jade, olive jade and new jade are serpentine, a softer material at roughly 2.5 to 5.5 on the Mohs scale with a waxy green look. Gold silk jade and Tianshan jade are quartzite from Xinjiang. African jade is a green grossular garnet. These are real stones and they wear well as beads — they are simply not jade, and the trade name travels with the strand.
Our dyed jade is white jade, dyed. Jade takes dye readily, which is why jadeite in particular is so often bleached, dyed or polymer-impregnated; nephrite rarely is. Every colored strand in our dyed jade range starts as white jade and is dyed to shade, so the color sits evenly from bead to bead instead of varying the way an untreated stone does. The stone underneath is jade, not serpentine.
Check the product page. Every listing states the material for that strand and says so when the color is dyed. If a project needs a specific mineral, read there before you choose.
