Gold-plated White Copper Taotie Bezel Mountain Ghost Coin Pendant

The Shang did not use the name taotie themselves. When Northern Song scholars compiled their catalogues of bronzes, they saw that beast face with a head and no body, thought of the Zuo Zhuan line about a worthless son of Jinyun who was greedy for food and drink, and called the motif taotie. The name came afterward; the pattern was already there in the early and middle Shang, cast on the bellies of ding and gui, symmetrical, the two eyes the most prominent thing. Some scholars argue for calling it the animal mask instead, on the grounds that animal mask is the more neutral term.

This pendant shrinks the beast face into a rim around a mountain ghost charm coin. The rim is pressed, with the horns, brows and fangs carried on the outer ring, turning all the way around, the join hidden underneath. The coin at the center is a reproduction casting: the mountain ghost’s talisman on one face, the bagua on the other. The rim bites down on the coin without covering the characters. It is made in two halves, front and back, with a ring of beads pressed along the outer edge and the seam at the side.

Mountain ghost coins are charms, not money. They were sewn onto children’s clothes in the old days, or hung from a bed curtain, for protection. The talisman face carries many characters, the strokes twisting as they go, and not being able to read them is normal; the drawing matters more than the reading. The coin is about the size of a copper cash, and with the rim it is a size thicker and hangs with some weight. These pieces were cast in folk workshops, the copper mixed, the ring dull, and since no one spent them, no one minded.

Gold plating over white copper: the hollows stay dark, the beast eyes and fangs are polished bright, and when the light catches them the two eyes come out first. The width of the rim is a matter of judgment. Too wide and it covers the coin’s characters; too narrow and it cannot hold them. This one leaves a narrow band, so the whole face still reads. A ridge rises at the center of the beast’s nose and lines up with the hole in the coin. The horns curl inward and stop above the eyes; that direction is the Shang way, and after the Zhou it came apart.

Two versions: the pendant alone, and the pendant on a chain. Alone, you fit your own cord; on a chain it comes matched, with fine links that hang without twisting. Copper pieces fear knocks, and the horns stand out furthest, so they take the damage first. Wipe along the curve of the rim rather than across it, or the plating lifts. Take it off to bathe; soap left in the seams dulls the gold. There is a groove inside the rim where the coin sits, and in time it works loose; a slip of thin paper will shim it.