White Copper Hammered Ziwei Talisman Open Ring

The shop name writes ziwei with the wei that means a flowering herb; the hui character stands for the wei of Emperor Ziwei, the wei of the pole star. Same sound, different character, and product names blur the two, which most buyers do not mind. Strictly speaking, the character on the bezel is neither one: it is a hui character, and neither word applies. The habit is fixed by now, and correcting it would only confuse people.

Emperor Ziwei holds a high place in the Daoist pantheon, one of the Four Sovereigns, dwelling in the Ziwei enclosure and governing the warp and weft of heaven, the sun, the moon and the stars. The Ziwei enclosure is the region around the pole star; the ancients read the sky to fix direction and to set the calendar, and gave the central place to it. This origin is older than the wealth deities or the protectors, and more obscure to talk about. The Four Sovereigns as a set dates from after the Song, with Ziwei placed below the Jade Emperor.

A hui character stacks a deity's name into one glyph, with strokes so numerous that it is close to unreadable. Each lineage writes differently, and in the fuller systems a single character fills the whole bezel. Engraving one on a hammered surface is harder still: the surface is not flat, so the cut has to press past the dents to keep an even depth, and the hammering has to come first, because reversing the order splits the metal. The centre line is set before cutting begins, and which dents the character will cross is worked out in advance.

The advantage of an open ring is that it adjusts; the disadvantage is that it adjusts only so far. Copper springs back, so a band opened and released closes a little, and repeated wide bending starts fine cracks at the two ends, and a deep crack breaks. Adjust it with both hands on the ends, adding force slowly, and no more than the amount needed. It should go on without turning; if it turns, it is still too big, and bending is not the answer. The two ends should be rounded, since square ends catch knitwear.

Of white copper and brass, the hammering on white copper breaks into a scatter of silver under light, while brass is warm and the shadow in the dents goes brown. Both are good; it depends on the clothes. White copper with grey, black or navy, brass with camel, brown or dark green. When the copper dulls, wipe it with a soft cloth and leave the dark in the dents, since that shadow is the life of the pattern; wipe it out and the hammering was for nothing. Do not carry heavy things with the ring hand, because once a copper band is distorted it does not come back, and resizing is difficult.