Four Seasons Phantom Quartz Bracelet — 8 mm

四季幽灵 — “four seasons phantom” — is what the Chinese trade calls a strand like this: clear quartz beads carrying inclusions in every colour the material comes in, strung so the colour moves around the wrist the way the year does. Moss green, then rust and red, then gold, then pale straw, then a run of near-black before the clasp brings you back to green.

Every colour here is something that got into the quartz while it grew. Minerals settled on the faces of a growing crystal, the quartz kept growing over them, and they were sealed in where they fell. The green is chlorite — in the close views it looks like moss or undergrowth, which is why the same material also sells as garden quartz. The rusts, ambers and golds are iron oxides. A few beads are so heavily included they read almost black, with the inclusion pooled at the base like a shadow.

A note on the name, since we would rather say it than let you assume. Strictly, a phantom is the ghost outline of an earlier crystal face, preserved inside a later one. The trade uses the word loosely for included quartz of every kind, and so do we in the title. What you are buying is natural quartz with natural mineral inclusions, and no two beads on the strand are alike — which is the whole point of it.

This strand closes with a silver-tone ball clasp rather than elastic, so it goes on and off without stretching over the hand.

One of a kind — this exact strand, photographed as it is, is the one that ships.

Specs
8 mm round beads · silver-tone ball clasp with small spacer caps · natural quartz with chlorite and iron-oxide inclusions · multicolour, strung as a colour gradient · every bead different

Every piece ships with the Joya Mana guidebook — a short sequence that starts with simply looking at the stone, moves to noticing what you notice, and ends with one intention written in your own words. We make no claims about what the crystal does. We do think an object you return to daily is a useful place to put your attention.