Jade jewellery enters the spotlight as creative forms find wider appeal

Holly Golightly, played by Audrey Hepburn in Breakfast at Tiffany’s, had her pearl necklace; Kate Middleton has her sapphire engagement ring; and every Chinese mother has her jade bangle.

Traditionally, a semi-translucent, intense medium green colour of jade, called imperial jade, is most prized for jade bangles. Apple green jade is seen as a suitable, less expensive alternative to imperial jade. But the stone comes in a multitude of shades and colours – from the warm reds, oranges, yellows and browns, to white, black and lavender.

The term “jade” is also an umbrella term, used colloquially to refer to two gems of different mineral compositions – the more expensive jadeite and the more common, and thus less expensive, nephrite.

In recent years, however, jewellery designers have started to throw traditional colour and quality preferences out the window. Not only are the non-traditional shades of jade finally getting their moment in the spotlight, the stone is also getting a chance to shine in forms more exciting than the simple bangle.

Jeweller and artist Dickson Yewn readily admits to being a recent convert. “At the start of my career, I actually tried to avoid it, because I thought jade was a bit of a cliché,” he confesses. “Jade jewellery has been [considered] traditional for a long time because dealers would always cut the stones to maximise profits. [The cutting of jade] has never been very creative. I love jade only when I can customise it and have it cut the way I want.”

And the way Yewn usually likes his jade cut is into flat slabs – a style which is one of the cutters’ least favourite, due to the large amount of rough it wastes. Yewn’s most renowned piece featuring such a cut is probably the ring from his Chinese Lattice collection seen on former US first lady Michelle Obama in 2011, which sported a rectangular slab of green jade sitting atop a latticed square shank set with diamonds.

Following the success of that ring, which propelled him to international fame, Yewn’s work with jade pieces has become progressively bolder. A ring from his Imperial Grace collection, for example, repurposes a fragment of jade broken from a traditional bangle as the centre stone.

Couture jeweller Wendy Yue is another designer with a strong affinity for jade. In her extravagant creations, jade is transformed into floral sculptures, which bloom on gardens of pave-set coloured gems or take centre stage as large stones on cuffs, while the slabs are engraved with floral designs and framed by tendrils of gold set with multi-coloured stones.