A yellow jade bracelet in a single strand, in round beads running from cream to golden honey. Inside each bead, paler bands of light seem to pour like honey. A warm colour, rare in jade, that lights up a tanned wrist.
In four lines
A yellow from cream to honey, with bands of light inside each bead.
A colour rare in jade, far rarer than green.
Superb on golden skin, and with yellow gold.
No clasp: it goes on in one movement, sized by wrist measurement.
A Honey Yellow, Bead After Bead
This yellow jade bracelet does not settle for one shade. Some beads are an almost buttery cream, others a deeper honey, and between the two a whole range of blonds. Look closely: each one carries paler bands that catch the light and shift as you turn your wrist.
That is what gives the strand its depth. In sunlight it lights up; in evening light it takes on the reflections of pale tea. No bead is a copy of its neighbor, and that is the mark of a material cut from rock.
A Colour Rare in Jade
When people think of jade, they think green. Yellow jade is far rarer, and that is what makes it so distinctive: you notice it without it shouting. In imperial China, yellow was the emperor’s colour, and yellow jade counted among the stones of the great rites. Wearing yellow means wearing the most prized colour in that whole tradition.
What to Wear It With
Honey is a warm colour: it sits naturally with golden skin, a summer tan, and yellow gold. It slips in very well between a gold watch and a fine bangle, or is worn alone to brighten a wrist.
As for clothes, it likes white, beige, camel, denim and every shade of sand. In winter it warms a cream jumper or a grey knit. It is an everyday bracelet, and it asks for no occasion.
Nephrite, Made to Be Worn
Nephrite is one of the two minerals the word jade covers, along with jadeite. It is made of interlocking fibers, which gives it remarkable toughness: it stands up to everyday knocks far better than most jewellery stones. That is the quality that made its reputation, long before its colour did. Jadeite or nephrite, what sets them apart, and the difference between hardness and toughness.
Wearing It, and Keeping It Beautiful
It has no clasp: it is strung on an elastic cord and goes on by rolling it over your hand rather than pulling on it. Choose your wrist measurement above the buy button. Measuring your wrist in two minutes.
A pale stone keeps its shine if you spare it creams and perfume: put those on before the bracelet, and take it off for the shower and for sports. Lukewarm water, mild soap and a soft cloth are enough. Never an ultrasonic cleaner, steam or solvents.Care in detail.
Additional information
Stone
Néphrite
Colour
Honey yellow
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 Attaches to Yellow Jade
What follows changes register, and I flag it rather than blend it into the rest of the listing. None of it is proven. These are customs and beliefs, old and documented, that I report because they are part of this stone's history. No piece in this shop is sold as a remedy, 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.
The emperor's yellowUnder the last Chinese dynasty, the brightest yellow was reserved for the emperor and his household. No other colour has carried so high a status in that culture.
The yellow of the EarthAn ancient Chinese ritual treatise, the Zhouli, assigns six ritual jades to Heaven, Earth and the four directions. Yellow jade is the one for Earth; white, the one for the West.
The stone worn against the skinIn China, jade is worn touching the skin rather than on display. It is said to take on a patina with its wearer, and that a strand worn a long time acquires a polish a new one does not have.
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.
