Women’s Jade Bracelet, a Light Green Jadeite Bangle

72,90 €

Women’s jade bracelet that is in fact a closed bangle: carved from a single piece, with no hinge and no clasp, round in section and wide. White and green mixed, in patches and streaks.

It is sized by inner diameter, not wrist size: it has to pass your closed hand, thumb tucked in. Measure before you order, it does not open and cannot be resized.

The pattern does not repeat: the piece you receive will not look exactly like the photograph. Bare stone, therefore weighable. Treatment status undetermined.

How to Measure Your Size: The Guide, Family by Family

A tape measure right at the wrist bone, laid on without pulling tight.

Category:

A women’s jade bracelet that is in fact a closed bangle: carved from a single piece, with no hinge and no clasp, round in section and wide. The jadeite here is white and green at once, the green advancing in patches and streaks across a milky ground.

In four lines

  • This is a bangle, not a flexible bracelet: it does not open and it does not stretch.
  • Sized by inner diameter, measured across your closed hand.
  • White and green mixed: no two examples ever look alike.
  • Bare stone, therefore weighable: the figure will be published here, with its date.

This Is a Bangle, and That Has to Be Said Before Anything Else

The word bracelet covers two objects that have nothing in common: the strand of beads on elastic, which goes on without a thought, and the bangle carved from a single piece, which does not open, does not close and cannot be resized. This one is a bangle, and it is the only piece in the catalog where a wrong measurement cannot be put right by anything.

So it is not your wrist you need to measure, it is what your hand needs to pass. Close your hand, tuck your thumb as deep into your palm as it will go, measure around the widest point, and divide by 3.14: that gives you the minimum inner diameter. Add one or two millimeters, because a bangle that only just goes on will go on once, cold, and will not go back on during a heat wave. The method in detail, and the size guide.

White and Green at Once

This piece does not have one color, it has two: a milky white ground, and green spreading across it in patches, clouds and streaks, denser on one side than the other. The Chinese market has a name for that pattern, and it seeks it out.

What interests me here is simpler: that pattern does not repeat. Two bangles cut from the same block will not carry the same map, and the piece you receive will not look exactly like the photograph. I say so before the purchase rather than after, because it is true of any natural material and because it is precisely what sets it apart from a uniformly colored paste. The colors of jade.

Jadeite, and What That Word Changes

This piece is listed as jadeite, a sodium-aluminum pyroxene. It is one of the two minerals the word jade covers, the other being nephrite, an amphibole. A Frenchman separated them: in 1863, Alexis Damour established that they are two unrelated species. What sets them apart.

Jadeite’s green comes from chromium and rings clearer than nephrite’s, which comes from iron and pulls toward spinach. And what lets a ring of this width hold without splitting is not its hardness but its toughness: a structure of interlocking crystals that stops a crack from spreading. The difference between hardness and toughness.

Wearing It, and What Actually Damages It

Once in place, a bangle sits snug and barely turns. If it turns a lot, it is too big and it will knock against tables and door handles. An impact does not scratch it: it chips an edge. What wears it day to day is the quartz in everyday dust, which rates 7 on the Mohs scale against 6.5 to 7 for jadeite, and which dulls the curve over time.

Lukewarm water, mild soap, a soft cloth, and a pouch it has to itself. Never an ultrasonic cleaner, never steam, never solvents: since the treatment status is unknown, any resin there might be would not survive them. Care in detail.

Additional information

StoneJadéite
ColorTwo tone
Stone shapeSolid bangle
MotifNo motif
MountingRigid bangle
MetalNone
SettingNo setting
Worn byWomen
Paired stonesNone, jade only
Mineral familySodium aluminum pyroxene
Hardness (Mohs)6.5 to 7
Reference density3.25 to 3.36 g/cm³
ToughnessExceptional, interlocking crystals
TreatmentNot determined
OriginOutside Burma, country of extraction not confirmed

What Tradition Attaches to the Jade Bangle

What follows changes register, and I flag it rather than blend it into the rest of the listing. None of it is proven. These are customs and beliefs, old and documented, that I report because they are part of this stone's history. No piece in this shop is sold as a remedy, and I claim no effect for this one.

The left wrist Several Chinese traditions link wearing the bangle on the left wrist to the idea of receiving rather than giving. The custom is widespread; no basis for it is known beyond the custom itself.
Never taking it off A bangle goes on once and stays on, sometimes for a lifetime. The closed shape has much to do with it: this is not a piece of jewelry you choose in the morning, it is an object you wear.
The pattern of white and green The Chinese market names and seeks out the jadeites where green floats in clouds over a pale ground. It is a market taste, old and documented, not a mineralogical quality.
A stone of moral virtue In Confucian thought, jade is associated with qualities of character rather than effects on the body: uprightness, constancy, restraint. It is the best documented meaning of them all.

These readings are told, not verified. What tradition puts into a jade bracelet, moral virtue in Confucius, and the virtues attributed to jade, honestly stated.

A stone does not replace a doctor and treats nothing: the full disclaimer is here.

Lead Times

Shipped within 48 hours of your order being confirmed, for delivery within 14 days from the day it ships. I keep no buffer stock, and I will not promise a date I cannot meet.

Shipping Costs

€6.99 no matter the destination, and free on orders of €47 or more to France, Belgium, Switzerland, and Luxembourg. The exact amount shows in your cart before you pay.

The Packaging, and Why It Matters

Every piece leaves in its own pouch, kept apart from the others. This is not about presentation: jade’s hardness is ordinary, 6 to 6.5 for nephrite and 6.5 to 7 for jadeite, and the quartz in everyday dust rates 7. Two pieces of jewelry that travel together arrive scratched.

Fourteen Days to Change Your Mind

No reason needed. One email opens a return, and there is no form to fill out. Return shipping is at your expense, unless the piece does not match its listing or arrives damaged.

Getting the size wrong is the leading cause of returns in this category, and jade cannot be resized the way a solid metal band can. Two minutes of measuring almost always prevents it. The size guide.

It is all spelled out here, with no fine print.

The Simple Routine

Lukewarm water, mild soap, a soft cloth. A very soft brush for the hollows of a carving. That is all, and it is enough.

What You Must Never Do, and Why

No ultrasonic cleaner, no steam, no solvent, no heat source. The reason is not caution for its own sake: the treatment status of my pieces is undetermined. My supplier cannot tell me, and the weighing establishes the mineral without saying anything about a possible resin impregnation. Resin withstands neither heat nor solvents, so every piece is handled as though it might contain some. The treatment information page.

The Scratch, and Where It Comes From

Jade is tough, meaning very hard to break: its structure of interlocking crystals resists cracking, and that is what made it possible to turn it into axes in the Neolithic. Its hardness, on the other hand, is ordinary, 6 to 6.5 for nephrite and 6.5 to 7 for jadeite. The quartz in everyday dust rates 7, and that is what dulls a jade, not impacts. The difference between the two.

Day to Day

Put the piece on after perfume and lotion, never before. Take it off for housework, gardening, and sports, where the hard knocks happen. Store each piece on its own, in its pouch. On a strand of beads, the thread wears out before the stone does: it gets restrung, and there is nothing abnormal about that.

Cleaning a jade piece and storing it.

What I Do, and What I Don’t

My name is Jade. I am French, from Morbihan in Brittany, and I live in Tallinn. I choose the pieces and have them set: I mine nothing, I carve nothing, and I do not do the metalwork myself. What I bring is the sorting, and with this material the sorting decides everything.

I am not a gemologist, a lapidary, or a therapist, and I do not claim to be.

I Weigh, I Do Not Certify

Before putting a reference online, I order one example of it for myself. When it reaches me unset, I weigh it in air, then suspended from a thread in a glass of water: the ratio of the two masses gives the density, and that figure separates jadeite, nephrite, serpentine, and dyed quartzite without ambiguity.

One example per reference, and not every piece. I never handle the piece that ships to you, and I would rather say so plainly than let anyone believe otherwise. The method, with its three limitations.

What I Cannot Know

The treatment status of my pieces. My supplier cannot tell me, and neither can the scale: it establishes the mineral, not the resin impregnation. Only laboratory infrared spectroscopy would settle the question, and I do not have that testing done. So you will never read “jadeite A”, “type A” or “untreated” on this site. The information page.

Where My Jade Comes From

No Burmese jadeite, and the first reason is legal. Not the one you read everywhere: the JADE Act of 2008 did ban these stones in the United States, but that ban was lifted on October 7, 2016. What applies today dates from April 8, 2021: the US Treasury sanctioned Myanma Gems Enterprise, the state-owned company that controls the Burmese gem trade. So there is no blanket ban, but an American is not allowed to do business with that entity, and a stone never tells you where it has been. I run one supply chain for ten markets, and it has to stand up to the strictest one. When an origin is not confirmed to me in writing, the listing does not state it. My origin policy.

The whole story.