Adjustable cord jade bracelet, braided in green around three jade tubes and two tiger’s eye beads. The thread takes up the tone of the stone instead of stepping back behind it.
No size to choose. The knot slides, you pull to tighten and spread to open, and it is taken up now and then like a shoelace.
Only the tubes are jade: tiger’s eye is a fibrous quartz, from a quite different family. The treatment status of the green stone stays undetermined. Why I write it down.
An adjustable cord jade bracelet, braided in green around three jade tubes and two tiger’s eye beads. It is the third cord of this stringing, and the boldest of the three: the thread takes up the colour of the stone instead of stepping back behind it.
In four lines
Braided green cord, adjustable by a sliding knot: no size to choose.
Three green jade tubes, two golden brown tiger’s eye beads.
The thread takes up the tone of the stone, where beige and black make a contrast.
Tiger’s eye is a fibrous quartz, not jade, and the page says so.
An adjustable cord, and what it removes
The braiding is not a decoration, it is a mechanism. Two strands cross in flat knots tightened around the carrying strands, and the block of knots slides without coming undone. You pull to tighten, you spread to open, and the bracelet passes the hand with nothing to handle.
What that removes: the size to measure, the clasp to close one handed, the elastic that slackens after a year. What it imposes: a habit. The knot loosens on its own with movement, and it is taken up now and then, like a shoelace. It is also what makes this stringing easy to give, since it fits any wrist.
The thread gets dirty, inevitably: it is braiding, not metal. It is cleaned in lukewarm water without soap, then dried flat, and it is better taken off for housework and sport.
Green on green, and why that is a choice
The same stringing exists on a beige cord and on a black one. Those make a contrast: beige softens, black separates. Green does the opposite, it extends the stone, and the whole reads as a single object rather than as a stone set on a thread.
It is the most colourful of the three and the least discreet. It suits tanned skin and linen better than a shirt sleeve, and it layers badly: two green bracelets is one too many.
Two stones, and only one is called jade
The three tubes are announced as jade. The two golden brown beads are tiger’s eye, a quartz whose parallel fibres return a moving band of light called chatoyancy. Jade does not do that: it lets the light through instead of returning it. The two stones answer each other by opposition, and I am not going to let the whole pass for a bracelet entirely of jade.
On the tubes, the thing to do is the one for any drilled stone: 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. The checks that need no equipment.
Outside Burma, country of extraction not confirmed
What tradition attributes to these two stones
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 coloured threadIn old Chinese jewellery the colour of the cord counted as much as the stone, and red dominated. Green on green is a recent convention, come from leisure jewellery: it carries no traditional reading. 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 gaze of tiger's eyeIts name comes from its moving band of light, which suggests a pupil. It is credited with a role of vigilance turned outward, where jade is associated with inner qualities. Two opposite readings on the same wrist.
The jade you patinate by handA piece 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.
Dispatch within 48 hours of your order being confirmed, for delivery within 14 days from dispatch. I keep no stock in reserve, and I will not promise a date I could not meet.
Shipping Costs
€6.99 whatever the destination, free on orders over €47 to France, Belgium, Switzerland and Luxembourg. The exact amount is shown in your basket before you pay.
The Packaging, and Why It Matters
Every piece travels in its own pouch, kept apart from the others. This is not a question of presentation: the hardness of jade is unremarkable, between 6 and 6.5 for nephrite and 6.5 to 7 for jadeite, and the quartz in ordinary household dust sits at 7. Two pieces of jewellery that travel together arrive marked.
Fourteen Days to Change Your Mind
No need to give a reason. An email is enough to open a return; there is no form to fill in. Return postage is at your expense, unless the piece does not match its listing or arrives damaged.
Getting the size wrong is the most common reason for a return in this category, and jade cannot be resized the way a solid metal band can. Two minutes spent measuring almost always avoids it. The size guide.
Lukewarm water, mild soap, a soft cloth. A very soft brush for the hollows of a carving. That is all, and it is enough.
What You Must Never Do, and Why
No ultrasonic cleaners, no steam, no solvents, no heat source. This is not a precaution for show: the treatment status of my pieces is undetermined. My supplier does not know it, and weighing identifies the mineral without telling me anything about a possible resin impregnation. Resin withstands 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 difficult to break: its structure of interlocking crystals resists cracking, and that is what made it usable for axe heads in the Neolithic. Its hardness, by contrast, is unremarkable, 6 to 6.5 for nephrite and 6.5 to 7 for jadeite. The quartz in ordinary household dust sits at 7: that is what dulls a 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 knocks against hard edges are common. 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. French, from Morbihan, living in Tallinn. I choose the pieces and have them mounted: I mine nothing, I cut nothing, and the metalwork is not done by my hand. What I bring is the selection, and with this material that is what decides everything.
I am not a gemmologist, not a lapidary, not a therapist, and I do not claim to be.
I Weigh, I Do Not Certify
Before a listing goes online, I order one example of it for myself. When it reaches me unmounted, 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 listing, and not every piece. I do not handle the piece that is sent to you, and I would rather write that down than let you believe otherwise. The method, with its three limits.
What I Cannot Know
The treatment status of my pieces. My supplier does not know it, and the scales do not tell me: they identify the mineral, not the resin impregnation. Only infrared spectroscopy in a laboratory would settle it, and I do not have that done. So you will never read “Grade A jadeite”, “Type A” or “untreated” on this site. The information sheet.
Where My Jade Comes From
No Burmese jadeite, and the first reason is legal. Not the one you read everywhere: the JADE Act of 2008 did 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 company that controls the Burmese gem trade. So there is no blanket ban, but a US person is not allowed to trade with that entity, and a stone never tells you where it has been. A single supply chain serves ten markets, so it has to hold up in the most demanding of them. When an origin is not confirmed to me in writing, the listing does not state it. My origin charter.
