Most of the jade in our collection comes with a certificate — a document from an accredited Chinese testing lab confirming, in black and white, that the piece is Type A, untreated, natural jadeite. We've written before about what those certificates actually mean and who does the testing. But a handful of pieces in our catalogue don't carry one, and we think that's worth explaining honestly rather than glossing over.
Why some pieces don't have a certificate
A small selection of our jewellery is handmade by us, here in Australia, using genuine jadeite beads and stones. Most of that material is Myanmar-mined jadeite, traded and worked through China's jadeite industry — the same source as everything else we sell. A handful of handmade pieces use jadeite sourced from Guatemala instead. What's different for all of these, regardless of origin, is the last step: instead of being finished and certified as a complete piece within a lab's own supply chain, the raw beads and stones are brought to Australia, where we design and assemble them into the finished jewellery ourselves.
Guatemala is one of only a handful of places in the world where natural jadeite is found in commercial quantity, alongside Myanmar. Jadeite from the Motagua River valley has been prized since the ancient Maya, who valued it above gold, and Guatemalan mines still produce genuine, high-quality jadeite today. We hold our Guatemalan-sourced stones to exactly the same standard as our Burmese material: natural, untreated colour and a cool, dense weight consistent with genuine jadeite — the same criteria we apply to every piece we grade as Type A ourselves.
The gold and silver settings that bring each piece together — clasps, findings, wirework — are sourced locally here in Australia, so a finished handmade piece is genuinely assembled from imported stone and local metalwork, start to finish, under our own hands.
That last step is exactly why there's no certificate. Chinese gemological labs test and certify finished pieces that pass through their own supply chain — that's the system we've described in our authentication post. A piece assembled afterward, on the other side of the world, from Burmese or Guatemalan material alike, simply never goes through that pipeline. It's not that the jade wasn't examined at some point upstream; it's that the finished piece, as it exists today, was never submitted to a lab as a completed item.
Our Fancy Beads Drop Earrings are a good example — each bead individually sourced for its natural colour and texture, then hand-assembled in sterling silver here in Australia.
What "Type A" still means here
We only use loose jadeite beads and stones — whether Burmese or Guatemalan — that we've sourced specifically because they show the hallmarks of natural, untreated material: the same qualities we look for when grading any piece as Type A, and the same markers China's testing labs check for in their own authentication process: natural colour variation, a cool, dense weight, and texture that doesn't have the slightly plastic, too-even look of a bleached or dyed stone. We select this material the same way we'd select material for any certified piece; the difference is simply that these particular stones become jewellery after they leave that system, not before.
The White to Green Beads Bracelet shows this in practice — the natural gradient from white to green is exactly the kind of uneven, organic colour distribution that's hard to fake, even without a certificate to confirm it.
So when we say Type A on these listings, it's a claim we're making ourselves, based on the same sourcing judgement we bring to everything else — not one backed by a third-party certificate. We think that distinction matters enough to say plainly, rather than let a "Type A" label on the page imply paperwork that doesn't exist. Where a piece is made from Guatemalan rather than Burmese material, the product description says so.
How to think about it as a buyer
If having a certificate in hand matters to you — for insurance, resale, or simply peace of mind — our certified pieces are the right choice, and there are far more of those than not. If you're drawn to a specific handmade piece and comfortable with our word standing in for a lab's, we're glad to talk through exactly what we looked for in the stone before it became jewellery, and happy to answer any questions about a specific piece before you buy.
Whichever you choose, once it's yours, our jade care guide covers how to keep it looking its best — the care basics are the same whether the piece is certified or handmade, and whether the stone is Burmese or Guatemalan.
We'd rather you make that decision with the full picture than assume every "Type A" label on our site means the same paperwork sits behind it.