A Founder’s Reflection: Why We Created Letters to My Granddaughter
Dear Choo Yilin Community,
For more than fifteen years, our clients have come to us in search of exceptional jade jewellery. Heirloom-quality jade bangles chosen not only for their beauty, but the lives they will accompany. After each piece is chosen, the questions always begin.
How do I measure my bangle size properly?
Can I shower with it?
How do I store it at night?
What happens if I accidentally knock it against something?
How do I clean and care for natural jade over time?
For years, we answered these questions one conversation at a time. Sometimes over e-mail and WhatsApp. Sometimes through voice notes sent late at night before a client’s flight the next morning.
Over time, it struck me that while we had always cared deeply for our clients after a bangle was chosen, much of that guidance lived in private conversations. Because it happened one conversation at a time, the labour behind it was easy to miss.
We would agonise over capturing the bangle in its most beautiful and accurate light. We would discuss colour, translucency, proportion, and craftsmanship in enormous detail.
Yet the knowledge surrounding how to live with a jade bangle was rarely treated as part of the formal work, even though it is what allows an heirloom to endure across decades.
And the truth is, so much of this knowledge did not come from gemmological certificates or technical manuals.
It came from women.
From grandmothers who knew when a bangle was too loose. From mothers who taught their daughters where to place it before bed. From aunties who reminded you to remove it before carrying something heavy with your hands.
These are often regarded as small gestures. Yet they shape the relationship a woman has with her jewellery over years of wear.
They are part of the invisible language of inheritance.
At some point, I realised this knowledge deserved the same level of thoughtfulness we give to the jewellery itself. But, I didn’t want it to feel like dry instructions tucked away on a website. I wanted people to desire the wisdom around a jade bangle - its care, rituals, and lived traditions - as much as they desired the bangle itself.
That was how Letters to My Granddaughter was conceived.
This series gathers the practical knowledge that has surrounded jade for generations. Some of it comes from tradition. Some of it comes from years of experience working with fine jadeite and seeing how women actually live with it over time.
What matters to me is preserving this knowledge properly. Because heirlooms are not sustained by materials alone.
They are sustained by the women who care for them, wear them, protect them, and eventually pass them forward.
With Love,
Yilin
