White Copper Auspicious Pattern Pendant

Auspicious motifs are made about three ways: by pun, by symbol, or by painting the story outright. Puns are the least trouble — bat for blessing, deer for salary, fish for surplus. Symbols work off the nature of the thing: pomegranate for many sons, pine and cypress for enduring cold. Painting a story takes the most work, since one picture has to carry a whole passage. Of the three, the pun is the easiest to read and the easiest to make vulgar. The vulgarity doesn't come from the pun; it comes from piling on too many.

For drawing in blessings and gathering wealth, the usual set is bat, coin, ruyi scepter and meander border. Bat above, coin below, ruyi across the middle, meander closing the edge, and the composition has its layers. The group is not about realism; it is about each element reading as a word. The meander is one line folding back and forth, closed at the end, and it must not show an end. Show one and it is called broken, which the old craftsmen would not allow. Four elements, one to a corner, and read out it says blessings before your eyes, wealth in your hand. The bat should be flying, not perched; a perched bat looks like a rat.

The composition here is one main motif at the center, small flowers in the four corners, and a ring of beads at the edge. The arrangement is common on old silverwork. The advantage is that no angle is empty; the drawback is that it blurs when small. White copper casts precisely enough that the beads still read one by one. The beaded border is the most laborious pass: each bead the same size, the spacing even. Machine-struck is even but dead; hand-worked is even with a little slack in it.

A round plaque wears better than a square one: the edge doesn't catch clothing and it doesn't dig when it turns. A polished face takes fingerprints; keep a soft cloth with you and two wipes bring it back. The aged version has black in the recesses, so the pattern reads more clearly, but it looks dirty against light clothing. The bright face fears hard objects; keys and coins in the same pocket will leave a patch of fine scratches within days. The plaque is thin, so the back needs a stiffening rib or it will bend. The rim of a round plaque should have a pressed line; pressed it stays crisp, unpressed it goes slack.

This is the easiest kind to give. The meaning is plain, no particular deity is involved, and no one takes offense. For an opening, blessings and wealth; for a move, for a birth, all pass. Precisely because it is universal it is also easy to forget; to be remembered, you have to choose something targeted. A pendant of this kind should not be large. Large and it is a plaque hung on the chest, and it stops being refined.