S925 Silver Zodiac Relief Earrings

Zodiac studs are common; zodiac studs in relief are not. Most are flat stamped. Relief gives thickness in profile, and when light comes in at an angle the animal's head stands up. The six designs here follow the temperament of each animal: the tiger with mouth open and teeth showing, the ox with head lowered and horns forward, the snake coiled in an S, the horse with mane tossed, the monkey holding a peach, the ram with curled horns. If you can tell which is which at that size, the carving has done its job.

The names are half the fun: Sudden Fortune Tiger, Cash Cow Ox, Ready Money Ram, Wealth-Gathering Snake, Payment-Collecting Horse, Ten-Thousand-Household Monkey — all puns angling for a blessing, tying the animal to income. Names like these go down well with people in business, and buying a pair for a client is not considered out of place. The names were added later; the motifs are the old ones, so do not treat the names as folklore. All six have the same back: polished, with a small character stamped in, the silver purity mark.

Only six of the twelve animals are made, and it is a choice rather than an oversight. Tiger, ox, horse, ram, monkey and snake each carry a blessing in their name; the others were hard to fit with a lucky phrase, so they were left for later. A full set of twelve will have to wait for another batch. I would rather say that up front than have someone assume they can pick any sign by birthday.

The studs are small and the relief is only a thin layer, so the line work has to be reduced. How far? The tiger's whiskers are not cut at all — only two arcs beside the mouth. The snake's scales are not cut; a few horizontal lines carry them. In a magnified photograph that subtraction looks crude; on an earlobe it is right, and more detail would collapse into a smudge. The relief height is not uniform: tiger and ox are struck deeper, snake and monkey shallower, because the animals themselves rise and fall differently.

The base is S925 with the post soldered on the back. A badly finished solder joint darkens from the seam outward over time; on these six the joint sits at the centre of the back and is polished, so you cannot see it. Use the silver backs, not plastic — plastic loosens with time and drops off when you bend your head. Dust collects in the recesses of the relief; a corner of the towel at the washbasin is easier than a dedicated cleaning session. The six can be bought mixed. An unmatched pair looks good — a tiger on one side, an ox on the other — the difference is the point.