Jade and tiger’s eye bracelet on a braided black cord: three green jade tubes, two brown beads with a moving reflection. Black brings out the green far more than a pale cord.
No size to choose. The knot slides, you pull to tighten and spread to open, and it is taken up now and then like a shoelace.
Only the tubes are jade: tiger’s eye is a fibrous quartz, from a quite different family. The treatment status of the green stone stays undetermined. Why I write it down.
A jade and tiger’s eye bracelet on a braided black cord: three green jade tubes, two brown beads with a moving reflection, and a sliding knot that sets the length. It is the most masculine of the three cords of this stringing, and the one that most frankly owns up to pairing two stones with no kinship.
In four lines
Braided black cord, adjustable by a sliding knot: no size to choose.
Three green jade tubes, two golden brown tiger’s eye beads.
Tiger’s eye is a fibrous quartz, not jade, and the page says so.
The black of the cord brings out the green far more than a pale cord.
Two stones, and why they hold together
Tiger’s eye is a quartz whose parallel fibres return the light in a band that moves when you turn the wrist. That is called chatoyancy, and it is an optical phenomenon, not a colour: the same bead looks dark brown from one angle and almost golden from another.
Jade does not do that at all. It does not return the light, it lets it through: it is judged on its grain and its translucency. So the two stones answer each other by opposition, one mobile and warm, the other stable and cold, and it is that contrast which makes the piece.
I say so because it is honest and because it matters when buying: this is not a bracelet entirely of jade. Two beads out of five stones come from another mineral family.
The black cord, and what it changes
The same stringing exists in beige and in green. Black is the one that separates the green most: on a pale cord the tubes melt into the whole, on black they stand out clearly. It is also the plainest to wear with a watch or another leather bracelet.
Macrame is not a decoration, it is a mechanism: two strands crossed in flat knots slide around the carrying strands, you pull to tighten and spread to open. No size to measure, no clasp, no elastic that slackens. In exchange, the knot loosens with use and is taken up now and then, like a shoelace.
What you can check yourself on the tubes
The thing to do is the one for any drilled stone: look at the drill hole. On a dyed stone the colourant concentrates there and the rim is darker than the rest. The colour also follows the micro cracks, in a network, instead of spreading through the mass. One tube against the light near a window, and it shows without a loupe. The checks that need no equipment.
Outside Burma, country of extraction not confirmed
What tradition attributes to these two stones
What follows changes register, and I flag it rather than blending it into the rest of the page. Nothing here is demonstrated. These are customs and beliefs, which I report because they are part of the history of this stone. No piece in this shop is sold as a remedy, and I claim no effect for this one.
Two traditions, not oneJade comes from ancient China, tiger's eye from the European and South African lapidaries of the nineteenth century. Making them meet on a cord is a modern idea: no old text associates them. What tradition puts into a jade bracelet.
A stone of moral virtueIn 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.
The gaze of tiger's eyeIts name comes from its moving band of light, which suggests a pupil. It is credited with a role of vigilance turned outward, where jade is associated with inner qualities. Two opposite readings on the same wrist.
The jade you patinate by handA piece worn every day ends by taking a polish the workshop does not give. Tradition sees in it an exchange between the stone and its wearer; it is mostly friction, and it is quite real.
Dispatched within 48 hours of your order being confirmed, for delivery within 14 days from dispatch. I keep no buffer stock, and I won’t promise a timeframe I couldn’t meet.
Postage charges
€6.99 to any destination, free on orders of €47 or more to France, Belgium, Switzerland and Luxembourg. The exact amount appears in the cart before you pay.
The packaging, and why it matters
Every piece ships in its own pouch, kept apart from the others. This isn’t about presentation: the hardness of jade is ordinary, between 6 and 6.5 for nephrite and 6.5 to 7 for jadeite, and the quartz in everyday dust sits at 7. Two pieces of jewellery that travel together end up scratching each other.
Fourteen days to change your mind
With no need to explain yourself. An email is enough to open a return, there is no form to fill in. Return postage is at your expense, unless the piece doesn’t match its listing or arrives damaged.
The wrong size is the main reason for a return 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.
Warm water, mild soap, a soft cloth. A very soft brush for the hollows of a carving. That’s all, and it’s enough.
What you must never do, and why
No ultrasonic cleaner, no steam, no solvent, no heat source. This isn’t a token precaution: the treatment status of my pieces is not established. My supplier doesn’t know, and weighing establishes the mineral without saying anything about a possible resin impregnation. Resin tolerates neither heat nor solvents, so every piece is handled as though it might contain some. The information sheet on treatments.
Scratches, and where they come from
Jade is tough, meaning very hard to break: its interlocking crystal structure resists fracturing, and that is why axes could be shaped from it 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 sits at 7: that is what dulls jade, not knocks. The difference between the two.
Day to day
Put the piece on after perfume and cream, never before. Take it off for housework, gardening and sport, where the knocks against corners happen. Store each piece on its own, in its pouch. On a strand of beads, the thread wears out before the stone: it gets restrung, and there is nothing abnormal about that.
My name is Jade. I’m French, from Morbihan, and based in Tallinn. I choose the pieces and have them set: I mine nothing, I cut nothing, and I don’t do the metalwork myself. The work I do is the sorting, and with this material that is what decides everything.
I am neither a gemmologist, nor a lapidary, nor a therapist, and I don’t claim to be.
I weigh, I don’t 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, not every piece. I don’t handle the piece that goes out to you, and I would rather say so than let you believe otherwise. The method, with its three limits.
What I can’t know
The treatment status of my pieces. My supplier doesn’t know, and the scales say nothing about it: they establish the mineral, not the resin impregnation. Only infrared spectroscopy in a laboratory would settle it, and I don’t have that done. So you will never read “jadeite A”, “type A” or “untreated” on this site. The information sheet.
Where my jade comes from
No Burmese jadeite, and the first reason is a legal one. Not the reason you read everywhere: the JADE Act of 2008 did indeed ban these stones in the United States, but that ban was lifted on 7 October 2016. What applies today dates from 8 April 2021: the US Treasury sanctioned Myanma Gems Enterprise, the state-owned company that controls the Burmese gem trade. So there is no general ban, but an American is not allowed to trade with that entity, and a stone never tells you where it has passed through. One single supply chain for ten markets: it has to hold up for the most demanding of them. When an origin isn’t confirmed to me in writing, the listing doesn’t state it. My sourcing policy.
