White Copper Thunder Pattern Talisman Script Gourd Spacer

The gourd is an old symbol in folk usage: it sounds like the words for blessing and emolument, its vine runs long, and its seeds are many. Put the three together and you have a phrase about sons and grandsons for ten thousand generations. Shaping a spacer as a gourd has a practical side as well. The waist is narrow, so it grips the cord and does not slide, which makes it steadier than a round bead. There are two spheres, the upper smaller than the lower, and a small error in the proportion stops it looking like a gourd at all. The waist has to be cut crisply, and cut too fine it breaks when the mould is pulled.

The thunder pattern is an old motif from bronzes: it doubles back on itself in square-cornered turns, one ring inside another. It was cut into ding and gui vessels in the Shang and Zhou, and later spread to porcelain, brocade and furniture without ever falling out of use. It is often mixed with the cloud pattern, the two together called cloud-and-thunder, and the border between them is not sharp; each maker takes what he wants, looking for that revolving energy. The corners of a thunder pattern have to stay hard. Round them and it becomes a cloud pattern, which has a different flavour.

The hui character is pressed into the belly of the gourd, not deeply cut, so the cast strokes come out with slightly rounded edges. The thunder pattern covers the shoulder, two bands of it, since more looks crowded. The pairing uses an old motif as ground and keeps the talismanic sense inside it: those who know read the character, those who do not read the pattern, and either way it holds up. Hui strokes crowded together blur in the cast, and on a good piece you can still see which way each stroke runs.

A spacer holds one position on a strand and does the work of punctuation. A strand of a single kind of bead looks dull; slip a gourd in and the eye has somewhere to rest. The place for it is usually at the sides, two of them set symmetrically, though one will do, worn on the outer wrist where you can see it. The hole runs along the long axis, so the gourd stands upright instead of lying on its side. Do not choose too large a spacer; one is enough to pull the proportions of a whole strand off.

Of the two coppers, the coolness of white copper makes the thunder pattern legible, while the warmth of brass makes the gourd look old. Copper darkens, and the grooves of the thunder pattern go black first; black makes the pattern clearer rather than dimmer. Wipe along the pattern and not across it, because wiping across rounds the ridges and the pattern goes shallow. Never clean it in an ultrasonic bath, which shakes rust loose inside the strokes and leaves it looking worse. On brass the thunder pattern is almost invisible in dim light and only shows when you turn it toward a lamp.