Jade cross bracelet: a cross cut from a very pale green jade, lashed onto a double cord of tan leather. The slider adjusts the length.
No metal: nothing that oxidises, nothing whose plating wears, nothing that sets off a nickel allergy. The leather, for its part, likes neither the shower nor salt water.
Species to be established by weighing. The cross detaches from the cord without a tool, so the measurement is possible. Treatment status undetermined.Why I write it down.
A jade cross bracelet: a cross cut from a very pale green jade, held by two thread whippings on a double cord of tan leather. The slider adjusts the length, and the piece is worn as readily on the wrist as on the ankle.
In four lines
A cross cut from the mass, neither moulded nor assembled.
Double cord of tan leather, adjustable in length by a slider.
No metal: nothing that oxidises, nothing whose plating wears.
Worn on the wrist or the ankle, the leather taking both.
A stone cross, and what that requires
Cutting a cross from a stone is harder than it looks: the four re-entrant angles are so many starts for a break, and most ornamental stones split during the roughing out. It is again the toughness of jade that shows here, that structure of interlocked crystals which resists the spread of a crack. The difference between hardness and toughness.
This one is thick, with softened edges, in a very light slightly bluish green. It carries no engraving: it is a bare form, and that is what makes it wearable by anyone.
Leather rather than metal
The mounting is entirely of leather and thread, without the least piece of metal. For a bracelet worn every day that settles three problems at once: nothing oxidises, nothing loses its plating, nothing sets off a nickel allergy.
In exchange, leather lives. It darkens with time, it takes a patina at the folds, and it likes neither the shower nor the sea: salt water stiffens it and makes it crack. It comes off for bathing, and that is the only real constraint of this piece.
The slider, for its part, loosens with use like any knot that slips. It is taken up by pulling on both strands.
What you can look at yourself
On a stone that is not drilled, the drill hole test is of no use. What you look at then is the translucency on the edges: jade lets the daylight through over a few millimetres of thickness, and the angles of the cross are exactly where that shows. A stone opaque right through, at such a thickness, is not jade.
You also look at the polish. Jade takes a greasy polish, slightly oily, very different from the vitreous shine of a glass or a resin. It is an impression, not a measurement, but it can be checked with the naked eye. The checks that need no equipment.
Outside Burma, country of extraction not confirmed
Two readings that do not come from the same world
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.
The cross, outside jadeThe cross does not belong to the tradition of Chinese jade, which does not use it. It is a Christian motif cut from an Asian stone, and the pairing is contemporary. I say so rather than invent a descent for it. 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 handChinese usage holds that a jade worn every day becomes warmer and brighter with the years. What changes is the surface, polished by friction and by the natural oils of the skin: the effect is real, the explanation is mechanical.
Wearing a stone on the ankleThe anklet is documented in many cultures, rarely with a precise meaning. Here it is mostly a question of cord length, and the slider gives it.
Dispatch within 48 hours of your order being confirmed, for delivery within 14 days from dispatch. I keep no stock in reserve, and I will not promise a date I could not meet.
Shipping Costs
€6.99 whatever the destination, free on orders over €47 to France, Belgium, Switzerland and Luxembourg. The exact amount is shown in your basket before you pay.
The Packaging, and Why It Matters
Every piece travels in its own pouch, kept apart from the others. This is not a question of presentation: the hardness of jade is unremarkable, between 6 and 6.5 for nephrite and 6.5 to 7 for jadeite, and the quartz in ordinary household dust sits at 7. Two pieces of jewellery that travel together arrive marked.
Fourteen Days to Change Your Mind
No need to give a reason. An email is enough to open a return; there is no form to fill in. Return postage is at your expense, unless the piece does not match its listing or arrives damaged.
Getting the size wrong is the most common reason for a return in this category, and jade cannot be resized the way a solid metal band can. Two minutes spent measuring almost always avoids it. The size guide.
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 cleaners, no steam, no solvents, no heat source. This is not a precaution for show: the treatment status of my pieces is undetermined. My supplier does not know it, and weighing identifies the mineral without telling me anything about a possible resin impregnation. Resin withstands 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 difficult to break: its structure of interlocking crystals resists cracking, and that is what made it usable for axe heads in the Neolithic. Its hardness, by contrast, is unremarkable, 6 to 6.5 for nephrite and 6.5 to 7 for jadeite. The quartz in ordinary household dust sits at 7: that is what dulls a 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 knocks against hard edges are common. 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. French, from Morbihan, living in Tallinn. I choose the pieces and have them mounted: I mine nothing, I cut nothing, and the metalwork is not done by my hand. What I bring is the selection, and with this material that is what decides everything.
I am not a gemmologist, not a lapidary, not a therapist, and I do not claim to be.
I Weigh, I Do Not Certify
Before a listing goes online, I order one example of it for myself. When it reaches me unmounted, 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 listing, and not every piece. I do not handle the piece that is sent to you, and I would rather write that down than let you believe otherwise. The method, with its three limits.
What I Cannot Know
The treatment status of my pieces. My supplier does not know it, and the scales do not tell me: they identify the mineral, not the resin impregnation. Only infrared spectroscopy in a laboratory would settle it, and I do not have that done. So you will never read “Grade A jadeite”, “Type A” or “untreated” on this site. The information sheet.
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 7 October 2016. What applies today dates from 8 April 2021: the US Treasury sanctioned Myanma Gems Enterprise, the state company that controls the Burmese gem trade. So there is no blanket ban, but a US person is not allowed to trade with that entity, and a stone never tells you where it has been. A single supply chain serves ten markets, so it has to hold up in the most demanding of them. When an origin is not confirmed to me in writing, the listing does not state it. My origin charter.
