S925 Silver Taisheng Command Floral Round Ring Charm

Le ling and chi ling differ by one character and by one layer of meaning. Daoist talismans commonly carry chi ling, where chi is a command issued from above and stands at the head of the talisman to show whose authority it carries. Le means to bind, or to engrave on stone, and is rarely used. The name written as le ling is most likely a misreading made while copying characters off a picture. I won’t correct it on the listing, but if you want a matching piece engraved, you should know which one to use.

A ring does the most work in a strung piece. It can be a spacer, holding two beads apart; a runner, hung on the outside of a main strand so that it slides; or a stop, holding one section in place. One ring, threaded differently, does different jobs. What goes wrong with fittings is the inner diameter: it has to pass the cord and still be smaller than the beads on either side, or it slides where it shouldn’t. A ring can also be used alone: the top ring of a hanging ornament, the connector on a bag charm, even the drop on a bookmark. The more varied the use, the more carefully the inner diameter needs measuring.

Openwork is cast first and cleaned up afterwards, cutting away the spaces between flowers and leaves and leaving the stems to connect them. Whether the cutting is clean shows in two places: whether the inner walls of the openings carry burrs, and whether the thinnest stems are solid. Silver is soft, and thin stems look good and bend at a touch; thick ones are strong and look clumsy. Where to sit between the two is your call.

After years in the fittings trade you notice that buyers divide in two: those who assemble to a drawing, and those who work it out once the piece is in hand. The first is easier; the second often produces better accidents. My advice is to fix the diameter of the main bead first, then the outer diameter of the ring, and look at the pattern last. However good the pattern, the wrong size is useless and ends up at the bottom of a box. Buying everything at once saves postage, but buying everything at once is also how sizes go wrong. My own habit is to buy two and try them.

Silver openwork dents, so don’t stuff it into a cloth bag with beads; beads are hard and will bend the flower stems. Clean with a soft brush, dry, and don’t soak it: water stays in the gaps of the openwork and dries into marks. Darkening in the recesses is normal, and that darkness is what separates flower from leaf, so don’t dip the whole piece in silver dip. The solder points on openwork hide behind the stems and can’t be seen from the front; turn it over and you will find one or two whitish traces, which is normal.