White Copper Ziwei Talisman Ring

A ring of characters runs around the band, end meeting end, once around the finger. They are cut intaglio, sunk in, so the fingertip finds groove after groove. The face has no change of width; the band is the same height all the way round, so turning it shows the same passage and never a sudden blank. The band is narrower than a plain one would be, so that the characters fit. Spacing between characters is set by hand, and close looking shows where it opens and closes.

The Ziwei hui is one of the more complex Daoist hui. It is not an existing Chinese character: it stacks components, rain, jian and er, in a set order, and its reading passes only from teacher to student, not through ordinary dictionaries. Writing a hui you do not draft first; you write it through in one breath, and if the line breaks you start again. Cutting it on a ring is harder still, since a curved surface is awkward to cut and the band has to be fixed and turned a little at a time. Once the blade goes down it cannot go back, because a second pass on copper leaves a step.

The inside of the band is plain, with no characters, polished, and it does not scrape the skin. The outside is filled with the hui, a hair’s width left between characters; too close and they smear into one. Copper is ductile, so it does not chip easily when cut, but it does raise burrs, and polishing is the finishing step that has to push every burr flat, otherwise it feels like a splinter. The roundness of the inside is corrected with a reamer, and then you turn it on a finger; only when you can find no ridge is it done.

A ring filled all the way round is not suited to resizing. Copper is tough: opening it up a little is possible, closing it down is hard, and too much and it wrinkles. Measure the finger before buying, at the widest point at the base rather than at the knuckle. Hands swell in summer and shrink in winter, and half a size either way is normal; better slightly loose than tight, since a tight ring restricts circulation and after a day you want it off. Measure with a strip of paper, mark where it meets, then measure the paper.

Dust in the cuts goes black and looks like dirt; it is copper oxide settling in the grooves. To clear it, brush with a soft toothbrush and soapy water, then rinse and dry. Leaving it is also fine, since the darkness makes the characters read more clearly. Over time the inside of the band polishes into bright marks where it rubs the skin. That is normal and needs no polishing. Do not use toothpaste when washing, because the abrasives round the edges of the cuts.