White Copper Jambhala Barrel Bead Bracelet Charm

A barrel bead is a cylinder with flat ends, strung end to end so the strand runs in a straight line. Round beads touch at a point, with gaps between them, and they rattle when the strand turns; barrel beads sit tight against each other, and a run of them reads as a column, which suits Tibetan-style work and old material. Used as a fitting, they mostly go at the crown bead or the waist bead, where one piece can set the tone of the whole strand. Diameter and length need not match: a longer bead looks elegant, a short one looks solid.

Wealth Deity Descended by Imperial Command is an inscription found on folk paper prints. The phrase means by imperial command, and the print shop that issued images of deities added those characters to give the figure a provenance. Inscriptions of this kind are common on New Year prints, on paper horses and on talisman paper, and the characters were usually written by the craftsman himself, with strokes that follow no model. What he was after was the meaning, not calligraphy. Paper horses are burned at festivals, so words printed on them burn along with the paper.

The white and the yellow version serve different purposes. White copper is cool, and it runs with dark wood, lapis and other cool stones. Brass is warm, and it belongs beside Southern Red, amber and old honey-coloured amber. One white and one yellow on the same strand is not ugly either, with a dark spacer disc between them so the colours pass into each other instead of colliding. White copper goes grey with age and brass goes brown, two different kinds of old.

A barrel bead is heavier than a round bead of the same diameter, because it uses more material. On a slim wrist, do not put too large a barrel bead at the waist position; one heavy bead pulls the whole strand down. The proportions run crown bead largest, waist bead next, main beads smallest, in three steps. Make all three the same size and you have a strand of abacus beads. Copper dents, so keep it away from keys. String the strand first and adjust the positions afterwards; take it apart and restring it repeatedly and the holes widen.

The hole runs through the centre and has to be straight, since a slight skew makes the strand snake. The two flat ends have to be parallel; with one end slanted, the beads pile up into a leaning tower. When you buy loose beads, stand several side by side on the table and see whether they stay upright. The ones that will not are the ones with ends out of parallel, and such a bead looks fine on its own and gives itself away once strung. Both mouths of the hole should be rounded, so the line is not cut as it passes through.