Bamboo jade ring in white stone and silver tone: the band imitates a bamboo stalk, alternating segments of pale stone with segments paved with zircons.
Bamboo is one of the three friends of winter: it bends under snow and straightens again, and its nodes mark the stages of a progression. That is what the design takes up.
Open at the back, it adjusts to the finger. The zircons are not jade, and the silver is not hallmarked: I write silver tone, not 925.
A bamboo jade ring in white stone and silver tone: the band imitates a bamboo stalk, alternating segments of pale stone with segments of silver tone paved with zircons. It is open at the back, so this one adjusts to the finger.
In four lines
The band imitates a bamboo stalk, segment by segment.
Pale stone alternating with silver tone paved with zircons.
Open at the back: this one adjusts to the finger.
The record will stay empty: a closed setting forbids weighing.
Bamboo, and why this motif
Bamboo is one of the three friends of winter, with pine and plum: three plants that hold when the others give way, and that have served for centuries as images of constancy in Chinese painting and poetry.
It bends under snow and straightens again, it is hollow so it also figures humility, and its nodes mark the stages of a progression. That last point explains the design: a ring made of successive segments takes up that reading, and bamboo is readily given at a passage, studies, a new post, a departure.
I report it because the question comes up, and a page that does not answer leaves the customer to look elsewhere. As everywhere on this site, I claim no effect for this piece.
A ring that adjusts, and what that changes
Almost every jade ring in the catalogue is a solid band cut from the stone: they cannot be resized and have to be right first time. This one is in segmented metal and open at the back: you widen it or close it gently by hand.
It is the handiest answer when you do not know the size, and it is what makes it, together with the jade flower ring, one of only two in the section that can be given without risk.
Two precautions: do not reshape it too often, because metal tires, and do not force it in one sharp movement, because the stone segments do not bend. The size guide helps you start from an approximate size.
Three materials, and only one is jade
The pale segments are announced as jade. The zircons paving the silver tone segments are not: they are synthetic stones or colourless natural zircons, brilliant cut, and I flag them in the record rather than let a pave of diamonds be imagined.
The silver is not hallmarked by my supplier. So I write it as silver tone, and not 925: a hallmark is information, and I do not invent it.
Outside Burma, country of extraction not confirmed
What tradition attributes to bamboo 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 three friends of winterBamboo, pine and plum form a trio found together on screens, porcelain and jewellery. Three plants that cross the bad season, read as three ways of not giving in. What tradition puts into a jade bracelet.
Hollow, therefore humbleThe bamboo stalk is empty inside, and scholars saw in it an image of modesty: full of nothing, so ready to receive. The comparison is classical in Tang poetry.
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 greenCultivated Chinese taste long placed white nephrite at the top, well above green. The present hierarchy comes from the trade in Burmese jadeite, and it is a matter of fashion rather than of quality.
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.
