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.
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.
