Copper Red Stone and Clear Quartz Cicada Spacer

The cicada turned up in jewellery very early. Jade cicadas in Han-dynasty tombs were placed in the mouth of the dead, borrowing the idea of the nymph shedding its shell and emerging renewed; cicadas worn by the living follow another line altogether, one that speaks of sitting high and drinking dew, of refusing impure food. This spacer bead takes the second path. The insect lies along the body of the bead with its wings folded, a ridge raised along its back and its head turned towards the string hole, as though it were about to crawl forward. A spacer is the joint of a strand: small, but never hidden.

The body is copper, the wing faces set with small red stones, with a clear quartz bead alongside. Red against white jumps, and only the weight of the copper underneath holds it down. The quartz is a plain round bead drilled through the middle, so on the main strand it separates the beads on either side while the cicada sits against its flank rather than taking the front. On any stone-set piece the stones should sit flush with the metal or a fraction below, so nothing catches a fingertip. In the hand, that difference is obvious at once.

A spacer matters more to a strand than people expect. A millimetre larger or smaller than the main beads and it changes the whole rhythm. The cicada has real thickness, so with a fine cord it is worth leaving a plain bead on either side as a buffer; otherwise the insect's belly presses against its neighbours and the cord bends at the same angle at the mouth of the hole until it frays faster than anywhere else on the strand. One is enough. Three in a row looks forced and kills the solitude that makes a cicada a cicada.

Copper dislikes sweat. After a summer day, press the surface dry with a cloth and don't leave sweat in the crevices overnight; by morning it will have gone dull. The red stones are set rather than glued, so keep the piece out of an ultrasonic cleaner — a few cycles and they work loose. Quartz is harder than copper, and in a long contest between the two it is the copper that goes, which is why the side of the cicada resting against the quartz will brighten first.

As a subject the cicada is not in the lucky-charm camp; it leans austere. Cicada motifs appear on Shang and Zhou bronzes, usually as a drooping leaf-shaped triangle, nothing like the naturalistic insect that came later. It suits someone who likes old things and spends weekends in museums better than someone who wants their symbolism to pay out. Buying a single bead to work into an existing strand is fine, and it holds up as an earring drop too — the hole is generous enough to take a different hook.