Adjustable Jade Bracelet on a Green Cord

50,90 €

Adjustable cord jade bracelet, braided in green around three jade tubes and two tiger’s eye beads. The thread takes up the tone of the stone instead of stepping back behind it.

No size to choose. The knot slides, you pull to tighten and spread to open, and it is taken up now and then like a shoelace.

Only the tubes are jade: tiger’s eye is a fibrous quartz, from a quite different family. The treatment status of the green stone stays undetermined. Why I write it down.

How to Measure Your Size: The Guide, Family by Family

A tape measure right at the wrist bone, laid on without pulling tight.

Category:

An adjustable cord jade bracelet, braided in green around three jade tubes and two tiger’s eye beads. It is the third cord of this stringing, and the boldest of the three: the thread takes up the colour of the stone instead of stepping back behind it.

In four lines

  • Braided green cord, adjustable by a sliding knot: no size to choose.
  • Three green jade tubes, two golden brown tiger’s eye beads.
  • The thread takes up the tone of the stone, where beige and black make a contrast.
  • Tiger’s eye is a fibrous quartz, not jade, and the page says so.

An adjustable cord, and what it removes

The braiding is not a decoration, it is a mechanism. Two strands cross in flat knots tightened around the carrying strands, and the block of knots slides without coming undone. You pull to tighten, you spread to open, and the bracelet passes the hand with nothing to handle.

What that removes: the size to measure, the clasp to close one handed, the elastic that slackens after a year. What it imposes: a habit. The knot loosens on its own with movement, and it is taken up now and then, like a shoelace. It is also what makes this stringing easy to give, since it fits any wrist.

The thread gets dirty, inevitably: it is braiding, not metal. It is cleaned in lukewarm water without soap, then dried flat, and it is better taken off for housework and sport.

Green on green, and why that is a choice

The same stringing exists on a beige cord and on a black one. Those make a contrast: beige softens, black separates. Green does the opposite, it extends the stone, and the whole reads as a single object rather than as a stone set on a thread.

It is the most colourful of the three and the least discreet. It suits tanned skin and linen better than a shirt sleeve, and it layers badly: two green bracelets is one too many.

Two stones, and only one is called jade

The three tubes are announced as jade. The two golden brown beads are tiger’s eye, a quartz whose parallel fibres return a moving band of light called chatoyancy. Jade does not do that: it lets the light through instead of returning it. The two stones answer each other by opposition, and I am not going to let the whole pass for a bracelet entirely of jade.

On the tubes, the thing to do is the one for any drilled stone: 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. The checks that need no equipment.

And the word jade on its own does not say much: what is sold under that name is very often serpentine or dyed quartzite. None of those names denotes jade. All the bracelets in the section, and what separates the two minerals of jade.

Additional information

StoneJadeite or nephrite, not resolved
ColorLight green
Stone shapeBar
MotifNo motif
MountingBraided cord
MetalNone
SettingDrilled stone
Worn byUnisex
Mineral familyCalcic amphibole, Sodium aluminum pyroxene
Hardness (Mohs)6 to 7
Reference density2.90 to 3.36 g/cm³
ToughnessExceptional, interlocking crystals
TreatmentNot determined
OriginOutside Burma, country of extraction not confirmed

What tradition attributes to these two stones

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 coloured thread In old Chinese jewellery the colour of the cord counted as much as the stone, and red dominated. Green on green is a recent convention, come from leisure jewellery: it carries no traditional reading. What tradition puts into a jade bracelet.
A stone of moral virtue In 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 gaze of tiger's eye Its name comes from its moving band of light, which suggests a pupil. It is credited with a role of vigilance turned outward, where jade is associated with inner qualities. Two opposite readings on the same wrist.
The jade you patinate by hand A piece 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.

These readings are told, not verified. The virtues attributed to jade, said honestly, and the moral virtues in Confucius.

A stone does not replace a doctor and treats nothing: the full warning is here.

Lead Times

Shipped within 48 hours of your order being confirmed, for delivery within 14 days from the day it ships. I keep no buffer stock, and I will not promise a date I cannot meet.

Shipping Costs

€6.99 no matter the destination, and free on orders of €47 or more to France, Belgium, Switzerland, and Luxembourg. The exact amount shows in your cart before you pay.

The Packaging, and Why It Matters

Every piece leaves in its own pouch, kept apart from the others. This is not about presentation: jade’s hardness is ordinary, 6 to 6.5 for nephrite and 6.5 to 7 for jadeite, and the quartz in everyday dust rates 7. Two pieces of jewelry that travel together arrive scratched.

Fourteen Days to Change Your Mind

No reason needed. One email opens a return, and there is no form to fill out. Return shipping is at your expense, unless the piece does not match its listing or arrives damaged.

Getting the size wrong is the leading cause of returns in this category, and jade cannot be resized the way a solid metal band can. Two minutes of measuring almost always prevents it. The size guide.

It is all spelled out here, with no fine print.

The Simple Routine

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 cleaner, no steam, no solvent, no heat source. The reason is not caution for its own sake: the treatment status of my pieces is undetermined. My supplier cannot tell me, and the weighing establishes the mineral without saying anything about a possible resin impregnation. Resin withstands neither heat nor solvents, so every piece is handled as though it might contain some. The treatment information page.

The Scratch, and Where It Comes From

Jade is tough, meaning very hard to break: its structure of interlocking crystals resists cracking, and that is what made it possible to turn it into axes in the Neolithic. Its hardness, on the other hand, is ordinary, 6 to 6.5 for nephrite and 6.5 to 7 for jadeite. The quartz in everyday dust rates 7, and that is what dulls a jade, not impacts. The difference between the two.

Day to Day

Put the piece on after perfume and lotion, never before. Take it off for housework, gardening, and sports, where the hard knocks happen. Store each piece on its own, in its pouch. On a strand of beads, the thread wears out before the stone does: it gets restrung, and there is nothing abnormal about that.

Cleaning a jade piece and storing it.

What I Do, and What I Don’t

My name is Jade. I am French, from Morbihan in Brittany, and I live in Tallinn. I choose the pieces and have them set: I mine nothing, I carve nothing, and I do not do the metalwork myself. What I bring is the sorting, and with this material the sorting decides everything.

I am not a gemologist, a lapidary, or a therapist, and I do not claim to be.

I Weigh, I Do Not Certify

Before putting a reference online, I order one example of it for myself. When it reaches me unset, 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 reference, and not every piece. I never handle the piece that ships to you, and I would rather say so plainly than let anyone believe otherwise. The method, with its three limitations.

What I Cannot Know

The treatment status of my pieces. My supplier cannot tell me, and neither can the scale: it establishes the mineral, not the resin impregnation. Only laboratory infrared spectroscopy would settle the question, and I do not have that testing done. So you will never read “jadeite A”, “type A” or “untreated” on this site. The information page.

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 October 7, 2016. What applies today dates from April 8, 2021: the US Treasury sanctioned Myanma Gems Enterprise, the state-owned company that controls the Burmese gem trade. So there is no blanket ban, but an American is not allowed to do business with that entity, and a stone never tells you where it has been. I run one supply chain for ten markets, and it has to stand up to the strictest one. When an origin is not confirmed to me in writing, the listing does not state it. My origin policy.

The whole story.