Green jade bead bracelet in nephrite, round beads strung on elastic with no clasp. The green changes from one bead to the next, and several carry black specks.
Sized by wrist measurement: it goes on by stretching. Put it on by rolling it over your hand rather than pulling on it, and the elastic will last far longer.
It is the most imitated piece on the market. Strung, therefore not weighable: instead, this listing gives you what you can check yourself, starting with the drill hole.
A green jade bead bracelet strung on elastic, in round nephrite beads of even diameter. The green is dark, between moss and bottle, and it changes from one bead to the next. Several carry black specks you can see plainly.
In four lines
Round nephrite beads, strung on elastic, with no clasp.
The green changes from one bead to the next, and several carry black specks.
Sized by wrist measurement: it goes on by stretching.
It is the most imitated piece on the market: this listing says what you can check.
It Is the Most Imitated Piece on the Market
A bead bracelet is jade’s entry-level object: cheap, mass produced, sold everywhere. It is also the one on which serpentine and dyed quartzite circulate most, under the names “new jade”, “Korean jade” or “Malaysia jade”. None of those names describes jade.
While you wait for the figure, here is what I look at myself, and what you can look at too: the drill hole first. On a dyed stone the colour concentrates there, and the rim of the hole is darker than the rest of the bead. The colour also follows the micro-cracks, in a network, instead of spreading through the body of the stone. Hold one bead against the light near a window and it shows without a loupe. The checks that need no equipment at all.
What the Beads on This One Show
They are not all the same green: some pull toward moss, others toward bottle, and the light does not pass through them the same way. Several carry black specks and fine streaks, the dark inclusions nephrite frequently carries.
That is not proof, it is the opposite of a warning sign. What should give you pause is a strand of forty rigorously identical beads: a perfectly reproducible colour is what dye produces, not what rock produces. The treatment status of this strand remains undetermined, like everything in this catalogue.
Nephrite, and What That Word Changes
These beads are listed as nephrite, a calcium amphibole, one of the two minerals the word jade covers. The other is jadeite, a pyroxene, and the two are entirely unrelated: Alexis Damour established that in 1863. What sets them apart.
Nephrite’s green comes from iron and pulls toward spinach; jadeite’s comes from chromium and rings clearer. Nephrite is also the tougher of the two, a structure of interlocking fibers that resists a crack spreading. Its hardness stays ordinary, 6 to 6.5, and it is the quartz in dust, which rates 7, that dulls beads over time. The difference between hardness and toughness.
The Elastic, and How to Make It Last
The beads are strung on an elastic cord. It is the most practical and the least durable way to string them: elastic ages, slackens, and eventually gives way, usually without warning. Two habits extend it considerably: put it on by rolling it over your hand rather than pulling on it, and take it off before sports and the shower.
When it goes, any jeweller will restring it for a few euros, and the beads are not lost. Lukewarm water, mild soap, a soft cloth. Never an ultrasonic cleaner, never steam, never solvents: since the treatment status is unknown, any resin there might be would not survive them. Care in detail.
Additional information
Stone
Néphrite
Colour
Dark green
Stone shape
Round beads
Motif
No motif
Mounting
Elastic
Metal
None
Setting
Drilled stone
Worn by
Unisex
Paired stones
None, jade only
Mineral family
Calcic amphibole
Hardness (Mohs)
6 to 6.5
Reference density
2.90 to 3.03 g/cm³
Toughness
Exceptional, interlocking crystals
Treatment
Not determined
Origin
Outside Burma, country of extraction not confirmed
What Tradition Attaches to the Jade Bracelet
What follows changes register, and I flag it rather than blend it into the rest of the listing. None of it is proven. These are customs and beliefs, old and documented, that I report because they are part of this stone's history. No piece in this shop is sold as a remedy, and I claim no effect for this one.
The stone worn against the skinJade takes on body temperature within minutes and holds it. That is a physical property, conductivity, and several traditions have made something else entirely of it. I stay with the first.
The strand of beadsThe round bead bracelet is a late form, one that came out of modern trade, whereas the pierced disc and the polished axe are attested from the Neolithic on. The age of the stone is not the age of the object.
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 black specksThe dark inclusions in nephrite have been judged differently from one period to another, sometimes a flaw, sometimes a mark of the natural. Neither reading says anything at all about the mineralogical quality of the stone.
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.
