White Copper Heavenly Secret Gourd Pendant

Gourd sounds like the words for fortune and salary, and that pair sits near the front of folk good wishes. In Daoist use the gourd was the vessel for elixirs; Iron Crutch Li of the Eight Immortals carries one on his back, and the travelling doctors of the old streets carried one too. So the shape answers to “fortune and salary” on one side and to “holding” on the other: it takes things in and keeps them. Those two meanings together make the gourd about the safest subject there is for a pendant. Folk paintings often pair it with a bat, for the sound of the word; this one is not paired. It is a gourd on its own.

The gourd has a small upper belly and a large lower one, with a waist drawn in between. Little ornament is cut into the surface: a single fine line around the waist separates the two halves. A plain gourd like this holds up best to looking; light falls on it and draws a long bright band down the curve. The top narrows to a small point, and the hole sits just below it, so it hangs straight instead of tipping forward. The base is round, and the piece will roll if you stand it up; it has to lie down. The curves run smooth, with no sudden fold anywhere, which is what lets the polish come up even.

Pendant alone or with a chain. The chain supplied is a plain one with a small clasp that does not show at the neckline. The gourd's waist is narrow, so it finds its own upright position when hung and does not sit crooked for long. A plain face has no front or back, so it turns as it likes, which is less trouble than a plaque with characters. Chain length follows height: on a tall wearer a short chain hangs at the collarbone and looks cramped. It has to suit the neckline too — short with a high collar, long with a low one. Get it the wrong way round and something looks off, though it is hard to say what.

A plain white copper face hides fingerprints worst of all; two touches and it is a haze. That is not dirt but oil from the skin, and one pass with a dry cloth takes it off. Do not wipe back and forth with a damp cloth; the water dries and leaves a worse smear. The waist is the thinnest part, so hold the bellies when you take it off, not the waist. A winter and a summer of wear and the colour settles, turning from cold white to an old tone with yellow in it, and that passage looks well. Scratches show plainly on a plain face, so do not store it loose with hard things.

The name Tianji stays on the style name; the pendant itself is honestly a gourd. Shops add words to names all the time, for no other reason than that it reads smoothly and is easy to remember. Judge it by the shape and it is a plain gourd, with not one extra stroke cut into it and no hidden mechanism. When someone asks what tianji means, I usually say it is just the name, and not to read too much into it. The virtue of a plain piece is that it wears well; the drawback is that there is not much to say about it. It stores easily and does not look old.