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.
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.
