Jade and tiger’s eye bracelet on a braided black cord: three green jade tubes, two brown beads with a moving reflection. Black brings out the green far more than a pale cord.
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.
A jade and tiger’s eye bracelet on a braided black cord: three green jade tubes, two brown beads with a moving reflection, and a sliding knot that sets the length. It is the most masculine of the three cords of this stringing, and the one that most frankly owns up to pairing two stones with no kinship.
In four lines
Braided black cord, adjustable by a sliding knot: no size to choose.
Three green jade tubes, two golden brown tiger’s eye beads.
Tiger’s eye is a fibrous quartz, not jade, and the page says so.
The black of the cord brings out the green far more than a pale cord.
Two stones, and why they hold together
Tiger’s eye is a quartz whose parallel fibres return the light in a band that moves when you turn the wrist. That is called chatoyancy, and it is an optical phenomenon, not a colour: the same bead looks dark brown from one angle and almost golden from another.
Jade does not do that at all. It does not return the light, it lets it through: it is judged on its grain and its translucency. So the two stones answer each other by opposition, one mobile and warm, the other stable and cold, and it is that contrast which makes the piece.
I say so because it is honest and because it matters when buying: this is not a bracelet entirely of jade. Two beads out of five stones come from another mineral family.
The black cord, and what it changes
The same stringing exists in beige and in green. Black is the one that separates the green most: on a pale cord the tubes melt into the whole, on black they stand out clearly. It is also the plainest to wear with a watch or another leather bracelet.
Macrame is not a decoration, it is a mechanism: two strands crossed in flat knots slide around the carrying strands, you pull to tighten and spread to open. No size to measure, no clasp, no elastic that slackens. In exchange, the knot loosens with use and is taken up now and then, like a shoelace.
What you can check yourself 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. One tube against the light near a window, and it shows without a loupe. The checks that need no equipment.
Outside 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.
Two traditions, not oneJade comes from ancient China, tiger's eye from the European and South African lapidaries of the nineteenth century. Making them meet on a cord is a modern idea: no old text associates them. 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 gaze of tiger's eyeIts 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 handA 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.
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.
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.
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.
