S925 Silver Black Tiger Altar Tiger Head Pendant

Black Tiger Altar refers to Zhao Gongming. Daoism titled him Marshal of the Zhengyi Dark Altar, the dark altar being the fasting platform, and his original office was driving off pestilence and fever and averting sickness and disaster; only later did he settle into the role of the fortune deity most people know. His image is usually dark-faced with a heavy beard, an iron crown on his head, an iron whip in his hand and a black tiger beneath him. Whip and tiger, one still and one moving, are the two markers that identify him fastest. The fortune deity is a later appointment, and merchants were slower to take him up than the temples were.

The tiger was in folk use long before the fortune deity. Children wore tiger-head shoes and caps with the character for king stitched on the brow, which was meant to guard the house and turn away evil. Painting tigers at the Dragon Boat festival, pasting them on doors, follows the same logic: the tiger is king of beasts, and anything baleful retreats from it. Taking the tiger head alone as a pendant follows that road. Tiger-head patterns are richest in folk prints: the king character on the brow, the curled fur at the cheeks, the fangs in the mouth.

In silver, three places matter on a tiger head: eyes, nose and teeth. The eyes should be sunk, which gives them life; the nose should swell, which gives it flesh; the teeth should show, which gives it menace. Make all three flat and you have a cat. Press all three too deep and the cheekbones and jaw fall away with them until you have a skull. That middle measure is where most of the labour goes on a piece like this. One more point on the silver tiger: the back of the head should be round rather than sliced flat, because flat turns it into a mask.

The mood of this subject is hard, and a leather or black cord suits it better than a silver chain, which is too polite to hold it. Men can wear it at the chest, women just below the collarbone; the size is modest, so it never turns aggressive. With a shirt, hang it outside rather than tucking it into the collar. Against dark clothing the silver tiger face leaps out; against pale clothing it reads like an old button.

A tiger head has many raised points and therefore many chances to be knocked, with the tip of the nose and the fangs taking it first; a chipped corner shows at once. Silver oxidises, dark in the recesses and bright on the high ground, and that contrast works in its favour, so there is no need to polish it to a uniform white. A broken fang cannot be replaced, only rounded off, and rounding takes away some of the menace.