White Copper Nine-tailed Fox Pendant Necklace

Nine tails spread across the face take up far more room than the body does. With a shape like this, the arrangement of the tails is the whole problem: the middle one longest, the others shortening in turn, the tips curling outward like an opened fan. They cannot all be the same length; equal tails make a comb. The body is simple by comparison, lying down, forepaws tucked to the chest, head turned slightly. The face does not have the height for more, so the tails can only be cut in two layers; a third layer would run into the edge.

The Classic of Mountains and Seas, in its Southern Mountains chapter, records a beast on Mount Qingqiu shaped like a fox with nine tails, its voice like a baby's, able to eat people, and eating its flesh protects against gu poison. Man-eater and medicine in a single short line; old books often write that way. By the Han the reading had shifted. The Baihu Tong, in its chapter on the Feng and Shan sacrifices, ranks the nine-tailed fox with the phoenix, the qilin and the white pheasant as an omen that appears when a ruler's virtue reaches the birds and beasts. The same beast went from a dangerous thing in the mountains to a good omen at court, and several centuries passed in between. The nine in nine-tailed was usually taken to mean many, not a number to be verified.

On Han pictorial stones the nine-tailed fox usually has its tails spread in a fan, branching one by one, the tips curling into small hooks. That treatment cuts well in stone and looks well too. Made as a copper pendant, the branches need hollows between them; solid tails piled together become a single plate under the light. The relief is kept to two levels, tails on one and body on the other, and the layering appears. The curl at the tips should be consistent; some curling left and some right looks a mess.

The pendant version is a single piece for your own cord; the pendant necklace version is already strung and can be worn on arrival. The face looks outward and the back is flat, with no pattern on the skin side, so it will not wear a groove over time. The nine tips are the thinnest points and catch on clothing, so a smooth cord is easier than a braided one. Choose a dark cord: copper's cold white against dark keeps the pendant from floating.

Worn long, the tips darken first, because that is where the rubbing falls. To brighten them, put a little copper polish on a soft cloth and work only at the tips, without taking the dark off with it; the darkness in the hollows is the outline. Take it off for showers, since moisture collects in the narrow gaps between the tails and eventually turns green, so clear it out with a toothpick and let it dry. Store it flat with the tips up, and never let anything heavy rest on those nine thin branches.