S925 Silver Eight Immortals Antique Enamel Earrings

Subjects taken from the Eight Immortals are drawn in two ways. One puts all eight figures in, crowded together and lively. The other takes only the object each of them carries and draws no figure at all, which the trade calls the hidden Eight Immortals. This set is the second kind. The lotus belongs to He Xiangu, the transverse flute to Han Xiangzi, the sword to Lü Dongbin, the pair of clappers to Cao Guojiu, the flower basket to Lan Caihe, the gourd to Iron Crutch Li.

The remaining two, the palm-leaf fan and the fish drum, are not made in this set, so it runs to six designs rather than eight. The fan belongs to Han Zhongli and the drum to Zhang Guolao, and completing the eight means looking elsewhere. Better to say so at the start than to have someone buy on the strength of the words Eight Immortals and expect eight pieces in the box. One on its own is fine, and so is a pair that does not match; wearing two different earrings is common now. If you do want a pair, take two whose meanings connect, a gourd with a flower basket, say, rather than two weapons.

The enamel is filled and fired. Lines are raised on the silver first, colour is laid into the cells, and the piece goes into the kiln until the glaze flows level; then it is ground back and polished. Colours shift in the firing and going a shade deeper is normal, so the palette depends on experience rather than on a chart. The antiquing blackens the silver edges, and colour set against black sits back instead of jumping the way new enamel does. Fired enamel carries minute pits left by the fire, and those are not a fault.

All the weight of an earring hangs from the lobe, and a thin lobe will ache by the end of a day. Weigh them in the hand: the two should be the same, and if they are not the pair has been mismatched. The thickness of the hook matters as well — too thick and it will not go through, too thin and it slides out — so try before you commit. Take them off before changing clothes, since a neckline is the easiest thing in the world to catch them on. With long hair, do not pull when a strand tangles in the hook; work it free slowly.

Enamel chips, and it dislikes sudden heat or cold. Dropped on a hard floor it loses a piece of glaze, and a lost piece cannot be filled in; the earring has to be made again from the start. Do not wear them in the bath, where hot water and soap will slowly take the shine off the glaze. When the silver edge darkens, pass a silver cloth over it lightly and keep off the colour, because the polishing compound in the cloth will abrade the glaze to a matte. For dirt on the colour itself, use a cotton bud with clean water, dab and blot rather than rubbing back and forth.