01Decisive
Try a knife in several places, not one
Serpentine's hardness varies within a piece, so a single successful resistance proves nothing. Test three or four spots; real jade resists everywhere, and serpentine will give somewhere.
Jade · Lovenhall Stone
How to Identify Serpentine ('New Jade')
The commonest jade substitute. Softer, lighter, and sold under a qualifying name.
Myanmar (jadeite), China, Canada, New Zealand, Guatemala (nephrite and jadeite)4 references
Serpentine is a group of magnesium silicate minerals, and the harder varieties take a good polish in a convincing green. It has been used as a jade substitute for as long as jade has been valuable, and the trade names it acquires are almost always jade with a qualifier: new jade, Korean jade, olive jade, Suzhou jade.
Two properties expose it. Its specific gravity of 2.44–2.62 is well below either real jade, so the scale-and-water test settles it in five minutes. And its hardness is both lower and inconsistent — the group spans 2.5 to 5.5, and a single carved piece often has softer and harder regions, so a steel knife tried in three or four places will find somewhere it bites.
Bowenite, the tougher variety, is the one that comes closest and is used for genuinely good carving. It is still under 6 in hardness and still well under 2.8 in density.
References and sizes
'New jade' · 'Korean jade' · 'Olive jade' · Bowenite
Establish which of these you are holding before judging it. A genuine piece read against another reference's rules will look wrong when it is not.
Model-specific checks
What decides a Serpentine ('New Jade')
These apply to this model and not to the rest of Jade. Work them alongside the maker's general checks, not instead of them.
02Decisive
Specific gravity under 2.7
Serpentine is 2.44–2.62 against nephrite's 2.90 minimum. A measured density in the mid-twos rules out jade of either kind.
03Strong
Read the trade name as a disclosure
'New jade', 'Korean jade' and 'olive jade' are established trade terms for serpentine. In this market a qualifier before the word jade nearly always means the stone is not jade.
The market
What a Serpentine ('New Jade') does on the secondary market
Inexpensive and honest under its own name. Sold as jade, a straightforward misrepresentation.
An orientation for honest, unrestored condition — never an appraisal, and never a quotation.
All the Jade checks
Free tools of the room
Lovenhall StoneRead the stone itself
The tests tell you what it is. The instrument reads a photograph and offers a name to start from — then hands you back to the tile and the coin, which are what settle it.
Free on iPhone & iPad. An estimate, never an appraisal.
Or write to the house