Back to Materials Jade Jade is the name given to two different minerals, nephrite and jadeite. Nephrite is found in many colours such as light yellow, green, brown. Jadeite is also available in many colours like green, white, blue and even violet. We use a nephrite jade, with a rich dark green colour that combines well with many other beads. Jade has always been popular in china, and high quality antique carvings from large pieces of jade can be worth millions of pounds. Thankfully not all jade is so expensive that the average person couldn`t hope to own any. There are many places in the world where the two types of jade are mined, with nephrite being the most common of the two. Jade (nephrite) has a specific gravity of approximately 2.95 (2.95 times the weight of water by volume) and a hardness of between 6.0 and 6.5 on the mohs scale and jade (jadeite) has a specific gravity between 3.24 and 3.43 with a hardness value around 7.0 on the mohs scale. Another type of jade we use in our designs is Honey Jade. This is a yellow/pale yellow stone with a lot of inclusions, white streaks and strickly speaking is a member of the jasper minerals, which is itself a type of quartz. Silicon dioxide is the overiding chemical make-up with sodium and aluminium creating the yellow colour. Not a true jade of the nephrite or jadeite class, but truly a quartz.