Jade and sterling silver bracelet with a white disc
40,90 €
Jade and sterling silver bracelet: a pierced disc of white jade at the centre of a silver chain of links and beads, with a small openwork charm.
925 is a standard, not a plating: nine hundred and twenty five thousandths of pure silver. It tarnishes and can be cleaned, where a silver tone metal wears and lets the underside show.
On a white the weighing separates less clearly: dolomitic marble reaches 2.85 and nephrite starts at 2.90. Treatment status undetermined.Why I write it down.
A jade and sterling silver bracelet: a pierced disc of white jade at the centre of a silver chain of links and beads, with a small openwork charm. It is the finest piece in the bracelet section, and the only one whose metal is a hallmarked silver rather than a plating.
In four lines
A pierced disc of white jade, the oldest form of Chinese jade.
A chain in sterling silver 925, a standard, not a plating.
Length adjustable by the back chain, no size to choose.
On a white the weighing separates less clearly: the page explains why.
Sterling 925, and what that figure means
925 is a standard: nine hundred and twenty five thousandths of pure silver, the rest copper for strength. It is the common jewellery silver in Europe, and it is not the same thing as a silver tone metal, which is a plating a few microns thick on any alloy.
The difference shows in use. A plating wears at the points of friction and lets the metal underneath appear, often within a year on a bracelet. Solid silver, for its part, oxidises: it tarnishes, it blackens in the hollows, and it can be cleaned. That is upkeep, not wear.
The rest of the catalogue carries mostly gold tone metals whose alloy my supplier does not specify, and I write that every time. Here the standard is announced, and that is the difference.
The pierced disc, the oldest form
The flat disc pierced at its centre is the oldest and most constant form of Chinese jade: examples are found in Neolithic burials, long before jadeite arrived from Burma. It is called a bi, and it accompanied the dead.
This one is small, polished plain, with no engraving. The milky white is the colour ancient China placed first, ahead of green, and it is also the hardest to judge: marble and quartzite imitate it far better than they imitate a frank green.
On a white, examining the drill hole helps less: there is no colourant to concentrate. What you look at instead is the translucency at the edge of the piece. Jade lets the daylight through over a few millimetres of thickness; dolomitic marble stays milky right through. The checks that need no equipment.
Outside Burma, country of extraction not confirmed
What tradition attributes to the jade disc
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 bi disc, and HeavenThe ritual texts associate the pierced disc with Heaven, round, and the square tablet with Earth. Examples have been found in Neolithic burials, laid on the body: it is the best documented form in all of Chinese jade. 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.
White before greenThe old rankings place white jade first, ahead of green, and associate it with purity of character. It is a hierarchy of cultivated taste, which says nothing about the mineral quality of a piece.
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.
