Dark green jade bangle, wide and carved from one block
60,90 €
Dark green jade bangle, cut from a single block, with no hinge and no clasp. The widest model in the section: a dark, dense green that opens into bottle green against the light.
It is taken at the inside diameter, not at the wrist, and a wide ring asks for more margin than a thin one. Measure before ordering: it does not open and it cannot be recut. The size guide.
Species to be established by weighing, jadeite or nephrite. Treatment status undetermined: my supplier does not know it, and my scale does not say it. Why I write it down.
A dark green jade bangle, cut from a single block and wide under the finger. It is the most massive model in the section: it is seen, it weighs, and in exchange it asks for a measurement taken with care, because a wide ring passes less easily than a thin one.
In four lines
A wide ring, cut from a single block: no hinge, no clasp, no seam.
Taken at the inside diameter, with a little more margin than on a thin bangle.
A dark, deep green, which lightens by transparency when the light passes through it.
Treatment status undetermined, and the page writes it rather than let anything be assumed.
A wide bangle is measured differently from a thin one
The basic rule does not change: it is not the wrist you must measure, it is the passage of the hand. Hand closed, thumb folded as far as it will go into the palm, take the circumference at the widest point and divide by 3.14. That gives you the minimum inside diameter.
What changes here is the margin. A thin ring slides on at an angle and profits from its tilt; a wide ring stays flat and forgives nothing. So allow more play than on a thin bangle, and take the size above without hesitating if you are between two. A bangle that just passes passes once, cold, and will not pass again on a hot day. The method in detail, and the size guide.
Once on, the width is paid for in presence: the bangle hardly turns, it stays visible on top of the wrist, and it is heard when it touches a table. It is a piece people notice, and that is what you come to it for.
Where that dark green comes from
The green of jade does not come from the same metal in both species. In jadeite, a sodium aluminium pyroxene, it is chromium that gives the frankest greens. In nephrite, an amphibole, it is iron, and the green then turns towards spinach, duller and darker. On a piece as dense as this one, both readings stay open until the scale has spoken. What separates the two minerals.
Look at it against the light rather than flat: a green that seems almost black on the table often opens into bottle green in front of a window, and that is where the translucency shows.
What makes jade able to hold as a ring with no frame is not its hardness, it is its toughness: a structure of interlocked crystals that resists the spread of a crack. It is the same property that allowed polished axes to be made in the Neolithic. The difference between hardness and toughness.
Why I write dark green jade bangle
Because the colour and the width are the two things that really separate this model from the other bangles in the section, and because the word jade on its own does not say much. What is sold under that name is very often serpentine, labelled new jade or Korean jade, or dyed quartzite, sold as Malaysia jade. None of those names denotes jade.
A very dark green is, besides, the favourite ground of imitation, because dye hides better there than in a light green. The difference stays physical and it can be measured: the four marks of the record are separated by far more than the uncertainty of a kitchen scale. All the bracelets in the section.
Additional information
Stone
Jadeite or nephrite, not resolved
Colour
Dark green
Stone shape
Solid bangle
Motif
No motif
Mounting
Rigid bangle
Metal
None
Setting
No setting
Worn by
Unisex
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 the jade bangle
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 left wristSeveral Chinese traditions associate wearing the bangle on the left wrist with the idea of receiving rather than giving. The custom is widespread; no basis is known for it other than custom itself. What tradition puts into a jade bracelet.
Dark green and restraintDeep greens were long kept for ceremonial pieces rather than everyday adornment, and they were associated with gravity rather than brilliance. It is a convention of taste, not a property of the stone.
Never taking it offThe bangle is put on once and kept, sometimes for a lifetime. The closed shape has much to do with it: it is not a piece you choose in the morning, it is an object you wear.
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.
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.
