A single-strand jade ball bracelet: large round beads, smooth, in a luminous water green that the light passes through at the edges. No metal, no clasp, nothing but stone, bead against bead.
In four lines
Large round beads, smooth, pleasant to roll under the fingers.
A luminous water green, veiled with white, different on every bead.
No metal: it wears as well with gold as with silver.
No clasp, so it slips on in one movement, chosen by wrist size.
The sphere, the simplest and the most beautiful shape
This jade ball bracelet stakes everything on shape. A round bead has neither face nor side: it catches the light from every angle, and the reflection slides across it as the wrist moves. Beads of this diameter give the strand real presence, with nothing showy about it.
And it is a bracelet you touch. Smooth balls, pressed one against the next, invite you to turn them between thumb and index finger, at the desk, on the phone, while reading. It is a habit you pick up quickly, without thinking about it.
A water green, never quite the same twice
The green is pale and cool, somewhere between mint and celadon. Inside, each bead has its own landscape: milky veils, deeper shades, and sometimes a small dark green point, like a river pebble that has been polished. At the edge of each sphere, where the stone is thinnest, the light passes through and the green lifts.
No bead is a copy of its neighbour, and that is why you do not tire of looking at it.
What to wear it with
With no metal at all, it takes no side: it goes just as well with a steel watch as with a gold bangle or a fine silver chain. Its water green likes white, linen, navy, grey and denim, and it brings a cool note to a dark outfit.
Wear it alone for a quiet wrist, or with other strands for a fuller effect. The size of the beads also makes it sit very well on a man’s wrist.
The shape that fears knocks the least
The sphere is not only beautiful, it is sturdy. A faceted bead has sharp edges, and it is almost always at an edge that a stone chips. A ball has none: nothing sticks out, nothing catches. Only the rim of the drill hole asks for a little care.
It is strung on elastic cord, with no clasp: roll it over the hand to put it on, without pulling on it. Choose your wrist size above the buy button. With large beads the strand sits a little tighter at equal length: if you hesitate between two sizes, take the larger. Measuring your wrist in two minutes.
Take it off for the shower, the pool and sport, and the elastic will thank you. Warm soapy water now and then, a soft cloth, and the polish stays intact. Never ultrasonic, never steam, never solvent.Care in detail.
Additional information
Stone
Néphrite
Colour
Water green
Stone shape
Round beads
Motif
No motif
Mounting
Elastic
Metal
None
Setting
Drilled stone
Worn by
Unisex
Paired stones
None, jade only
Mineral family
Calcic amphibole
Hardness (Mohs)
6 to 6.5
Reference density
2.90 to 3.03 g/cm³
Toughness
Exceptional, interlocking crystals
Treatment
Not determined
Origin
Outside Burma, country of extraction not confirmed
What tradition attributes to a round jade bracelet
What follows changes register, and I flag it rather than blending it into the rest of the page. None of it is proven. These are customs and beliefs, old and documented, which I report because they are part of the history of this stone. No piece of jewellery in this shop is sold as a treatment, and I claim no effect for this one.
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.
Heaven is roundAn old formula of Chinese cosmology says that Heaven is round and Earth is square. That is why the pierced jade disc, round, was the ritual object of Heaven.
Jade patinated by handChinese collectors have for centuries handled a piece of jade at length, day after day, to deepen its polish. A strand of balls lends itself to that naturally.
The green of springIn the Chinese system of the five phases, green is the colour of wood, of the east and of spring. It is the colour of things that begin.
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.
