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When I began working with jade more than 20 years ago, I was drawn to it mainly as a jewellery <\/strong>designer.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Its soft lustre and subtle variations in colour offered possibilities I wanted to explore, particularly in pairing it with gold and diamonds to create contemporary heirlooms with an old soul.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n My grandmother understood jade very differently. She owned several jade bangles and believed they were valuable.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n When I began building my jewellery company\u00a0<\/span>in 2009, she offered them to me to sell.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n It was a generous gesture, but I could not use them. My company works only with Type A jadeite, which is untreated, and her bangles did not meet that standard.<\/span><\/p>\n We found another meaningful purpose for them instead, incorporating the pieces into our educational workshops as samples for customers to understand the different treatments and qualities of jadeite.<\/span><\/p>\n For my grandmother, the technical classification of the bangles was beside the point.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n She belonged to a generation for whom jade represented security.<\/span> <\/strong>Jade pieces equated to wealth that could be worn on the body and, when necessary, sold to buy something useful.<\/span><\/p>\n Asking me to sell her bangles was one of my grandmother\u2019s clearest expressions of love.<\/span><\/p>\n To her, their value ultimately lay i<\/strong>n what they could do for her granddaughter.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n In Singapore, conversations about inheritance tend to centre on property, savings and how assets should be divided.<\/span><\/p>\n