Peace Buckle — 平安扣
$860
Luck and flow. Warm honey jadeite in the shapes people have handed to one another for a very long time.
运 (yùn) is not luck as a lottery. It is luck as a current — something you move with rather than wait for.
Honey and golden jadeite — 土, earth — takes its colour from iron that entered the stone near the surface of the deposit over millions of years. It is warmer than green, and against most skin tones it reads as gold rather than as a gemstone.
Alongside it sits 火, fire: 红翡, the scarcest warm tone in jadeite and the colour worn at a wedding or at the turning of a year. And once a year we string all five colours — water, earth, fire, air and mystery — onto a single cord.
The forms here are the traditional ones, carved plainly. We keep the symbolism but not the ornament, because a piece meant to be worn every day should be quiet enough to be forgotten.
The Pieces
Six in this release
Fortune Tablet
$1,260
Golden Ripple
$2,900
Longevity Lock
$1,680
Ember Drop — 红翡
$2,150
Five Elements Strand
$3,900
The Symbols
What the shapes mean
You do not need to believe in any of this to wear it. But it is worth knowing what you are giving.
Peace Buckle — 平安扣
A plain disc with a hole at its centre. The unbroken circle is safe passage; the opening is the way through. Traditionally given to someone travelling, moving house, or starting again.
Longevity Lock — 长命锁
Shaped like a padlock, hung on a child to lock a long life in place. Now more often given at a graduation or a wedding — any threshold worth marking.
The Fortune Tablet — 福
A rectangular plaque, engraved on the reverse. We can cut a single character, a date, or a name into the back at no charge before shipping.
Five Elements — 五色
Green, yellow, red, white and black on one cord: water, earth, fire, air and mystery. A whole year, and a whole landscape, worn on the wrist.
Giving
Jade is meant to
change hands
There is an old and slightly stubborn idea in Chinese families that jade should be received rather than bought — that a stone carries the intention of the person who chose it, and that the intention is the point.
Every Fortune piece ships in a paulownia wood box with a hand-written card, and we will engrave the reverse of a tablet or lock with a character, a date or a name. Tell us the occasion and we will help you choose.