White Copper Wudang Mountain Five Elements Vase Pendant

The vase is a good pun in folk usage: ping, the word for vase, sounds like ping, peace. Set out a vase and you are saying safe and sound. The five-element vase adds metal, wood, water, fire and earth, five directions and five colors, each in its place, with the body divided into five facets or ringed with five patterns — the point being completeness. There are several ways to order the five elements, by the generating cycle or by direction, and which one a plaque follows varies from region to region. The carving takes one arrangement and stays with it across the whole face.

The form is small mouth, long neck, swelling belly, ring foot. Proportion decides everything: the neck must be slender, the belly round, the lip flared a little, or the whole thing won't stand. Shrunk to pendant size, the neck-to-belly transition is the first thing to go wrong — pull it in too fast and it becomes a gourd. This one keeps a straight stretch of neck before releasing into the belly. The cord holes sit on either side of the mouth, so the vase hangs upright instead of tilting. Cut the neck short and the vase has no neck at all, and reads as a drop rather than a vase.

Gold and silver versions. Gold is warmer and suits a red cord and dark clothing; silver is cooler, and with a plain cord it looks quiet. Both are surface treatments over a white copper base, not gold or silver, and with wear the areas touching skin dull first, which is the copper showing through. A gold vase goes best with a red cord, silver with black or charcoal; both are old pairings. Neither treatment is thick enough to survive a hard knock.

The mouth and the ears are the most exposed points, and a chip there breaks the shape. Take it off for housework and when moving things. Clean with a dry cloth only — no ultrasonic, no soaking. The belly is hollow, water that gets in doesn't dry, and trapped moisture turns green. Because the belly is hollow it rings faintly when tapped, which is normal. Don't handle the body with wet hands; a water mark dries as a white ring.

Wudang Mountain stands in Danjiangkou, Hubei. Its main peak is Tianzhu, its temples were at their height in the Ming, and the True Warrior is the mountain's principal deity. The name here borrows that subject and its origin — it does not mean the piece was brought down from the mountain or ever stood on an altar there, and that should be said plainly. The temples climb from the foot of the slope to the golden summit, step after step of stone, a good half day's walk. Images of the True Warrior are everywhere, in bronze, wood and stone, in various poses.