Copper Heavenly Official Totem Bracelet

Six options, so pick the colour first and the length second. The yellow version is warm and turns brown as it ages; the white version is cool and turns grey. Face width and pattern are the same on both, and the only difference is tone. Lengths run 18, 20 and 22 centimetres. Measure the narrowest part of the wrist and add a centimetre and a half, so that one finger slides underneath. That is the most comfortable fit. The wide-face version is for a thicker wrist or for someone who likes weight on the arm; on a slender wrist a wide face only makes the wrist look thinner.

Of the Three Officials, the Heavenly Official is the one who grants blessings, and the fifteenth day of the first lunar month, the Lantern Festival, is his day. In folk New Year prints he wears a red robe and holds a ruyi sceptre, often with a bat and a small boy beside him for the pun on blessings arriving from heaven. On a bracelet the figure cannot open out the way a print does. Only head and shoulders are kept, and the rest is handed over to the pattern on the links. Worn on the wrist it is read a segment at a time, not taken in as a single picture.

The totemic Heavenly Official faces straight out. His crown is built in three tiers, brow and eyes are set with a few horizontal and vertical cuts, and the beard is drawn into two strands falling downward. The lines of the robe are reduced to a handful of arcs that meet the run of the links. The copper ground is dark, the recesses blackened by antiquing, the raised passages polished. From a distance it is a dark plaque; up close the eyes and brows appear. Old pieces often hide their detail this way. It makes no noise and rewards looking.

The links are joined by hidden pins rather than soldered shut, so the chain follows the curve of the wrist and does not dig in when you lie down. Eighteen centimetres is the standard men's length, twenty is for a thicker wrist, and twenty-two counts as a large size, though some people buy it to wear over a sleeve as an ornament. The wide-face twenty is the heaviest of the group. At the same length, a wide face weighs noticeably more than a narrow one, and the drag is obvious; anyone used to a light bracelet may not take to it.

Worn against the skin, copper leaves a faint green ring on the wrist after you sweat. It washes off and is not the finish coming away; it is the ordinary reaction between copper and sweat, and the darker version leaves more of a mark. If that bothers you, choose the white. In summer, wipe the inside with a dry cloth when you get home. Wear two bracelets in rotation and give each a day off, and oxidation slows by half. For grime in the joints, use an old toothbrush dry. A damp brush pushes dirt into the pin holes, and over time the joints stiffen until they no longer open and close smoothly.