Jade plaque bracelet: some fifteen carved green slabs, joined edge to edge on a double elastic. Each plaque carries a motif hollowed out of the mass.
This is not a row of beads. The slabs are drilled with two holes and threaded on two parallel threads: the ring stays flat, it keeps its orientation and does not knock.
Taken at the wrist, it goes on by stretching. Species to be established by weighing, treatment status undetermined. Why I write it down.
A jade plaque bracelet: some fifteen carved green slabs, joined edge to edge by a double elastic, forming a supple and flat ring. It is a format little seen in Europe and it deserves explaining, because it is not worn at all like a row of beads.
In four lines
Slabs joined edge to edge, not threaded beads: the ring stays flat.
Each plaque carries a motif hollowed out of the mass.
A double elastic through two drillings per slab: it does not twist.
Taken at the wrist, it goes on by stretching.
Why a plaque bracelet is not worn like a row
A row of beads is a chain of spheres: it turns freely round the wrist, it rolls, and the bead you had in front of you is underneath ten minutes later. A plaque bracelet does not. The slabs are each drilled with two holes and threaded on two parallel elastics, which stops them pivoting.
The result is a supple but flat ring, which keeps its orientation and lays a continuous surface against the skin. It does not tangle in a sleeve and it does not knock: it is the quietest format in the section.
The counterpart is that it is seen. Some fifteen adjoining slabs cover far more wrist than a row of beads of the same diameter, and the effect is frankly wider.
The motif, hollowed and not printed
Each slab carries a carved relief, the same from one plaque to the next, in tight scrolls. It is hollowed into the stone, not engraved on the surface nor printed: you feel it under the thumb, and the bottom of the hollow is more matt than the polished parts.
It is a detail that is useful. On an imitation moulded in resin 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, that is to say 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
As on any drilled row, look at the 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.
Then look at the slabs one against the other. They should not be rigorously the same green: a colour perfectly reproducible over fifteen pieces is what a dye produces, not a rock.
Outside Burma, country of extraction not confirmed
What tradition attributes to carved 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.
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 plaques of the beltUnder the Ming, jade plaques mounted on a belt marked the rank of the official who wore it, and their number counted as much as the stone. It is the one documented tradition specific to plaques, and it says nothing about a bracelet.
The motif that wearsA piece worn every day ends by taking a polish the workshop does not give, and a hollowed motif takes it faster on its edges. It is friction, and it is quite real.
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.
