Engraved Jade Bracelet, Plaques with a Carved Motif
50,90 €
Engraved jade bracelet: slabs in a tender green, each carrying a motif hollowed out of the mass, joined edge to edge on a double elastic.
On a pale stone the relief is read not by contrast but by thickness: where the material is thin it is brighter. You have to turn the wrist to bring it alive.
The motif is felt under the thumb, and the bottom of the hollows is more matt than the polished parts. Treatment status undetermined.Why I write it down.
An engraved jade bracelet: slabs in a tender green, each carrying a motif hollowed out of the mass, joined edge to edge on a double elastic. On a pale stone the engraving reads in a quite different way from a dark green, and that is what makes this model interesting.
In four lines
A motif hollowed into the stone, not engraved on the surface nor printed.
A tender, light green, on which the relief reads by shadow and not by contrast.
Joined edge to edge on two elastics: the ring stays flat and does not twist.
Taken at the wrist, it goes on by stretching.
Reading a relief on a pale stone
On a dark jade an engraving is seen by contrast: the bottom of the hollow stays in shadow and the drawing appears black on green. On a pale, translucent stone that mechanism does not work, because the light enters the stone and comes back up from the bottom of the hollow.
The motif is then read otherwise, by very slight differences of thickness: where the material is thin it is brighter; where it stays thick it is denser. The drawing appears pale on pale, and you have to turn the wrist to bring it alive.
It is more discreet than an engraving on a dark ground, and far harder to imitate in resin: a casting reproduces the shape of the hollow, not the way the light travels through the material.
Hollowed out, and not printed
The motif is hollowed into the stone. You feel it under the thumb, and the bottom of the hollow is more matt than the polished parts, because it is harder to reach when polishing.
That detail is useful. On a moulded imitation the relief is clean, even and identical to a tenth of a millimetre on every piece. On a worked stone the motif repeats but never superimposes exactly, and the sharp angles of the drawing blunt here and there.
Jade stands this work because it is tough: its interlocked crystals resist the spread of a crack. Hollowing out a slab a few millimetres thick without splitting it is possible on very few stones. The difference between hardness and toughness.
What you can check yourself
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.
On an engraved piece, also look at the bottom of the hollows. A dyed stone is often more loaded with colour there than on the surfaces, because the colourant had more purchase on a less polished zone. On a stone coloured through its mass, hollow and surface are the same tone.
Outside Burma, country of extraction not confirmed
What tradition attributes to engraved jade
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.
Carving rather than polishingScholarly texts distinguish polished jade, which shows the material, from worked jade, which shows the hand. Both have had their supporters for centuries, and the quarrel is not settled. What tradition puts into a jade bracelet.
The motif that wearsA relief worn every day softens on its edges, and tradition sees in it the mark of time spent with the object. It is friction, and it is quite real.
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.
The polish, and what is read in itThe scholarly tradition associates jade with a soft rather than a sharp gloss, and makes of it an image of restraint. It is an aesthetic reading turned moral, not an observation about the stone.
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.
