White Copper Gourd Auspicious Cloud Pattern Pendant

The gourd has an unusual place in folk life. It is a melon and also a vessel: hollowed out when ripe, it holds water, medicine, wine. Daoism treats it as a ritual object, and gourds for elixir pills appear constantly in painting — the iron-crutch Li of the Eight Immortals carries one. Gourds have many seeds and the vine runs long, which gave rise to meanings about many children and long continuity. Few other shapes carry so much. Gourds hung at a door or beside a bed take the shape and nothing else; there is no need for one to actually hold anything.

The cloud here is a supporting player. The cloud head passes around the waist of the gourd, or lifts it from below, and its job is to connect a lone gourd to the rest of the plaque. It must not overpower the gourd: the lines finer than the gourd’s outline, the depth a shade shallower, so the hierarchy stays clear. Whether a maker understands the material shows first in whether the supporting element steals the scene. Where the cloud rides over the gourd, someone probably took the easy route and filled the plaque.

The difficulty in a gourd is the balance of the two spheres. The upper is small and the lower large, and the waist between them has to gather cleanly — gather too sharply and it looks like two balls stuck together, gather too gently and it stops reading as a gourd. Working small, a carver usually flattens the lower sphere a little so it sits more steadily on the plaque, and keeps the upper one round, which drops the centre of gravity. The two spheres also have to read as one object rather than a stack of two.

This is a standard piece on its own, with no chain or cord option, so you fit it yourself. The shape is round, and a fine chain will make it look top-light; a thicker cord or a slightly heavier chain suits it better. The hole is at the top of the stem. Worn one way the gourd points up, the other way the mouth points down, and both are used. On a cord the line passes through the hole and takes a sliding knot, so the length can be changed at any time.

The waist is the narrowest part and the part that breaks first. Dropped on a hard floor, it is almost always the waist that goes. Everyday wear is fine; take it off for sport and for moving things. Press the copper with a dry cloth and run a cotton bud around the recess at the waist. No ultrasonic cleaning — the joint at the narrow waist will not take the vibration.