White Copper Mountain Ghost Relief Beast Pattern Pendant

The Mountain Spirit section of the Nine Songs opens: there seems to be someone in the fold of the mountain, clad in ivy, girdled with mistletoe. The poet gives her no proper name, only what she wears and what she rides — a red leopard, with striped wildcats trailing behind. Later painters mostly worked from those two lines. Nobody has seen her, so every image is made from the text. The ivy is a climbing vine and the mistletoe a hanging lichen; both are things that wrap around trees on a mountainside.

The pendant sets the red leopard and the striped cat along the lower edge, one to each side, bodies pressed low so only the head and forequarters show, tails curling half a turn along the border. Above them is the spirit in profile, ribbons streaming back, the face given as an outline only. The relief has three levels: beasts lowest, figure in the middle, cloud breath shallowest, just a few strokes at the corners. None of the three competes; the eye still lands on the figure first. Her face carries no features at all, only a line for the profile.

The mountain-spirit charm coin is another matter. That is a folk coin, never spent, a spell cast on one face and bagua or a thunder command on the other, sewn onto a child's clothing or hung from a curtain hook. Whether it and the Mountain Spirit of the Nine Songs are the same figure is disputed. I won't rule on it; I'll only set out where each comes from and let the buyer weigh it. Charm coins are small, close to the size of a cash coin, and lie flat when stitched to cloth.

The expensive part of three-level relief is the floor. The background between levels has to be cleared properly: cut it too shallow and the light flattens all three into one; cut it too deep and the strokes look stranded. Here the floor drops steeply enough that the steps read from the side. White copper is soft, and a heavy pass collapses an edge, so the beast's ears are rounded — blunt by choice, with no burr left. The total height difference is thin, and only light holds it up.

Two options, differing in the fitting. The pendant alone suits anyone who already has a chain. The Chopin chain version arrives ready to wear, and that chain is fine, too light for a heavy pendant — this one isn't heavy, so the pairing works. Before a hot spring or a swimming pool, put it away in a bag; sulfur and chlorine are both unkind to copper. If the face picks up sweat, press it with a dry cloth once you're home rather than letting it sit damp overnight. The clasp is a small ring, and short nails will want a tool.