S925 Silver Lotus Tassel Earrings

The lotus carries several names in Han Chinese pattern books — lianhua, furong, shuihua — and all of them mean the same flower. Once Buddhism arrived from the west, the lotus throne became the seat of buddhas and bodhisattvas, and a flower that grew in water ended up on a pedestal. Later the Song scholar Zhou Dunyi wrote On the Love of the Lotus and pulled it towards the idea of rising clean out of mud, which put the literati reading above the religious one. The lotus on a temple throne and the lotus painted along a village bed curtain were never quite the same thing: one spoke of rank, the other of the season. Same flower, different eyes, different meaning.

On this pair the upper section is a half-open lotus, the tips of the petals turned slightly outward, with a bundle of tassels hanging beneath. The tassel is a live element. It sways with every step and hangs dead still when you stop. Dangling ear ornaments run back to the buyao of the Han and Tang, and that small movement is the whole point of them. A tassel cannot be too long or it sweeps the shoulder; too short and it never moves. Falling near the jawline is about right. The petals are kept few — too many and they crowd, too few and it stops being a flower. That sense of spacing is where the hand shows.

Whether the petals hold their shape comes down to the alloy. The other seven and a half per cent in S925 is not dirt; it is the skeleton. Fine silver on its own is too soft, the tips would never stand and would flatten at the first press. Silver's natural tone is a cool white, and once a surface is curved the light draws a thin bright band across the petal that fades as you turn it. That light is half-matte. It does not sit on top the way plating does. The advantage of bare silver is that when it wears, it is still silver all the way through. Plating is a different story: once it rubs through, the colour underneath is not the colour on top, and it looks bad.

Anyone with a loose piercing should go into a tassel design with expectations set. The whole weight hangs from the lobe, and after half a day you feel the pull downwards; it is more obvious if the cartilage is thin or the hole sits low. Don't wear them with a turtleneck — the tassel fights the collar and by evening it will be a knotted bundle. Long hair needs watching too, because strands wind into the links when you bend your head. If you want to wear them daily, pick a shorter tassel. Less swing, fewer problems.

Silver going dark is a matter of when, not if. In a humid southern climate a month is enough to show a yellow cast. Wipe with a silver cloth in one direction rather than rubbing back and forth. The fine chain of a tassel is the part that hates being folded, so hang the earrings on a small hook instead of balling them into a box. Take them off before a shower: shampoo foam lodges in the links and dries to a white film that looks like the finish has come away. Keep toothpaste out of the hollows of the petals. The grit cuts through the matte surface and leaves a patch that shines like a scratch.