Jade and red agate bracelet: a row of green beads closed on two interlaced rings, framed by two beads of a deep red.
The two rings are released from a single piece of stone, with no solder and no glue. The contrast of translucent green and opaque red is the most classical pairing in Chinese jewellery.
Agate is a chalcedony, not jade, and its red most often comes from heating, an old and stable process. Why I write it down.
A jade and red agate bracelet: a row of green beads closed on two interlaced rings, framed by two beads of a deep red. It is the only one of the three models in this listing to bring in a second colour, and it is that colour which makes the whole piece.
In four lines
Two interlaced jade rings, released from a single piece.
Two red agate beads on either side, and gilt spacers.
Agate is a chalcedony, not jade, and its red often comes from heating.
Strung on elastic, it is taken at the wrist and goes on by stretching.
Red and green, and what I know about the agate
The two red beads are agate, a chalcedony, that is to say a quartz with microscopic crystals. Nothing to do with jade, neither in composition nor in structure.
And it has to be said plainly: the deep red of agate is very largely obtained by heating. The process is old, documented since antiquity, it transforms an iron oxide already present in the stone and it is considered stable. It is not a dye added on, but neither is it a colour that came out of the deposit as it is. I write it because this catalogue does not imply what it cannot establish.
The contrast is frank: a cold, translucent green against a dense, opaque red. It is the most classical pairing in Chinese jewellery, and it is what gives this model its presence, where the other two from the same listing stay all in green.
Two rings in a single block
The central piece is the same as that of the double ring model: two circles passing one through the other, released from the same stone, with no solder and no glue. The lapidary hollows out between the two with no way of making good a mistake.
It is the toughness of jade that permits it, a structure of interlocked crystals resisting the spread of a crack. Not its hardness, which is another property. The difference between the two.
What you can check on the green beads
The thing to do is the one for any row of beads: 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. The checks that need no equipment.
The beads are not all the same green, and so much the better: a rigorously uniform row is what a dye produces, not a rock. As for the word jade on its own, it does not say much: what is sold under that name is very often serpentine or dyed quartzite. None of those names denotes jade.All the bracelets in the section.
Additional information
Stone
Jadeite or nephrite, not resolved
Colour
Light green
Stone shape
Round beads
Motif
No motif
Mounting
Elastic
Metal
Gold tone, alloy not stated
Setting
Drilled stone
Worn by
Women
Mineral family
Calcic amphibole, Sodium aluminium pyroxene
Hardness (Mohs)
6 to 7
Reference density
2.90 to 3.36 g/cm³
Toughness
Exceptional, interlocking crystals
Treatment
Not determined
Origin
Outside Burma, country of extraction not confirmed
What tradition attributes to jade and to red
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.
Red, the colour of celebrationIn China red is the colour of weddings and of the new year, the one given and worn at passages. Paired with the green of jade, it comes from an old taste for contrast more than from a precise meaning. 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 jade you patinate by handA row of beads 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.
Two linked ringsTwo circles passing one through the other are an image of attachment in just about every culture, and the Chinese is no exception. It is a broad reading, with no precise text behind it.
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.
