About Alive
Necessary to sustain life
- Medicine
- Law
- Business
- Engineering
What we stay alive for
Poetry, beauty, romance, love.
Why the name“Medicine, law, business, engineering, these are all noble pursuits, and necessary to sustain life. But poetry, beauty, romance, love, these are what we stay alive for.”
人间有味是清欢
苏轼
Why the name
Alive is about
the second list.
Nobody needs a bracelet to sustain life. We make them for the other reasons: a line of poetry that stays with you, the open water in an old painting, someone you think of more often than you say, the way wood warms in the hand.
A bracelet can’t bring any of these about. It can keep one of them close.
Nine centuries earlier
“What gives this world its flavor is a clear, quiet joy.”
Su Shi (1037–1101), from a song lyric to the tune Huan Xi Sha.
Keating said it with passion. Su Shi said something close, and said it quietly. We try to keep both: what is worth living for, and a quiet way of saying it.
What we make
Bracelets, shaped by
Chinese aesthetics.
Alive is a bracelet brand with a Chinese sense of beauty. We take what we find in people’s lives, in nature, stories, culture and materials, and through careful design, make what is worth keeping into pieces you can wear, touch and give.
We care how a piece is seen, touched and worn, and why it is worth keeping.
见Seen
One red bead between two blues: a choice you can see. No. 08
触Touched
Round beads, turned between two fingers.
戴Worn
On the wrist, through the day.
留Kept
Set down on a stone dish. No. 05
How we work
A piece can begin
in many places.
Someone’s situation, a story that stays with us, the feel of a landscape, or simply the pull of a material. These ideas, the materials, the form and the wearing shape one another until the design is settled.
How a piece begins- 境
Someone’s day
An ordinary afternoon, noticed.
- 念
“When something matters, slowing down can be the hardest part.”
A thought
From the studio, behind 游标远锚.
- 景
A landscape
Mist over water. Photo: Andrew Yu, Unsplash.
- 画
A painting
Shen Zhou, 1499 (detail): a way of looking, for 绳峡留白.
- 材
A material
One dark bead with an uneven outline, kept as it is.
- 形
Then, a form
No. 07 澄心·随形, worn.
The rest is yours
Read right to left, as a handscroll opens
Made to be added to
A Chinese handscroll is opened a little at a time, from right to left, and many were made to be added to. Shen Zhou’s scroll, to the right, is five feet of painting followed by four feet of colophons, mounted after it. The red marks along its edge are collectors’ seals.
Another of his scrolls, A Spring Gathering, now in Washington, carries a long inscription his student Wen Zhengming wrote in 1545, and four more by the Qianlong Emperor, added between 1765 and 1793.
红豆生南国，
春来发几枝。
愿君多采撷，
此物最相思。
王维
Tang dynasty · Wang Wei, “Xiang Si”
Where No. 03 began.
One red to rest on; smaller reds carry it on.
ALIVE2026 · Alive · No. 03 相思有寄
What we made of it, and why.
Yours
The verse after that
is yours.
Nothing here is saved or sent.
What we promise
It does not promise the outcome.
It gives your intention a place to live.
We will
- 一Explain why a piece is made the way it is.
- 二Tell you what each material is, and how sure we are.
- 三Show who made what.
- 四Deliver what we say we will, and say plainly what we cannot.
- 五Leave the meaning to you.
We won’t
- 一Promise luck, love, health, or any outcome.
- 二Call a modern idea an ancient tradition.
- 三Speak for “Chinese culture” in general.
- 四Decide for you what a piece must mean.
Who we are
Three people,
early on.
One runs the business, one designs the pieces and works with our makers, one looks after what we share and the people who write to us. We work with bead makers and suppliers we have chosen, and we record who made which part.
Where we are now
Early, and
clear about it.
- NowFirst pieces in development; samples are being finished and checked.
- NextMaterials, sizes and prices confirmed for each piece.
- ThenA first release, starting with the United States.
A fair return
So the work
can go on.
We want to keep making pieces people choose to wear, give and keep, and to earn a fair return through quality you can trust, clear promises and reliable delivery. That return is what lets us keep putting work into design, service and new pieces.
Begin with a piece
