Lotus flower jade bracelet, strung on elastic. Round beads in a soft olive green, separated by small gilt caps, around a lotus flower worked in relief.
It is taken at the wrist and goes on by stretching: no fine measurement to take, which makes it the simplest piece in the section to give.
Species to be established by weighing. The gold tone is a plating on an unspecified alloy, not gold, and the treatment status of the stone stays undetermined. Why I write it down.
A lotus flower jade bracelet, strung on elastic: round beads in a soft olive green, separated by small gilt caps, around a lotus flower worked in relief. It is the most accessible piece in the section, and the easiest to give, because it asks for no measurement.
In four lines
Round olive green jade beads, strung on elastic, with no clasp.
A gilt lotus flower at the centre, and a small drop charm beside it.
Taken at the wrist: it goes on by stretching, with no fine measurement to take.
The gold tone is a plating on an alloy, and the page says nothing else.
The lotus, and why that motif
The lotus is the most widespread motif in Chinese jewellery after the pierced disc, and it is not chosen at random: the plant comes out of muddy water and opens clean, which made it very early an image of uprightness. It is found in Buddhist art as much as in scholarly poetry.
Here it is worked in relief, petal by petal, on a gilt piece about the size of a bead, and it is flanked by two patterned caps. It is not a discreet piece: the gold tone catches the light far more than the stone, and it is what you see first.
An olive green, warmer than the greens of the section
The beads turn towards olive, a dull green mixed with yellow, quite far from the frank green of the jadeite bangles and the dark green of the nephrites. They are not all identical: the colour loads on some, lightens on others, and the light does not pass through them in the same way.
That is not a defect, it is the opposite of a warning sign. What should make you pause is a row of rigorously identical beads: a perfectly reproducible colour is what a dye produces, not a rock.
The thing to do, on this bracelet as on any row of beads, is to 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. One bead against the light, near a window, and it shows without a loupe. The checks that need no equipment.
What I do not know about the metal, and I say it
The flower, the caps and the charm are gold tone, that is to say plated on an alloy my supplier does not specify. It is neither gold nor vermeil, and I am not going to write it otherwise. A plating wears at the points of friction, and on a bracelet it is the underside of the wrist that marks first.
Outside Burma, country of extraction not confirmed
What tradition attributes to the lotus and to 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.
The lotus risen from muddy waterThe flower grows in the mud and opens without keeping a trace of it. It is the most constant image attached to it, in scholarly poetry as in Buddhist art: staying clean in a setting that is not. 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 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.
Giving jadeJade is a gift for a passage more than for a celebration: a birth, a coming of age, a departure. A bracelet that asks for no measurement lends itself to that use, where a bangle requires you to know the other person's hand.
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.
