White Copper Guardian Generals Relief Three-hole Bead Set

The guardian generals are deity-generals of the Taiwanese folk procession troupes. On procession they are performed by people in costume: blue faces, fangs, a tongue held in the mouth, ritual implements in hand, appearing in pairs as the Increase General and the Loss General, with set footwork, wide and sweeping as they move. You see this at temple fairs in Taiwan; elsewhere few recognize it. Processions fall on fixed days, mostly at temple fairs and pilgrimage departures, so it is not something you see many times a year.

The supplier has turned the subject into a relief three-hole bead. The three-hole bead is the one that closes a bracelet: a straight hole takes the main line, a side hole takes the Buddha head, which is why it is also called the mother bead. It is the most conspicuous position in a strand, so the carving goes here — face, crown and hands all have to separate, and if they do not you have a lump. Below the three-hole bead sits the Buddha head, and below that the disciple beads, closing layer by layer.

The face is the whole plaque. The blue is easy; the fangs are hardest: two teeth must show outside the lip without growing so long they look false, and the tongue held in the mouth has to press on the lower lip — cut it shallow and it disappears, cut it deep and it is a hole. When choosing, look straight at it for three seconds; if you cannot read it as a face, the work is not there. The points of the fangs cannot be too thin: thin and they break coming out of the mould, and a break in the mould ruins the whole mould. The tongue must sit dead center; off a little and the face looks crooked.

How to arrange the pieces in the set needs deciding first. Three-hole bead at the top, then Buddha head, then disciple beads, small plaques at the sides, and the drop hanging at center. White copper’s cold tone goes best with dark wooden beads and quarrels with bright stone. Holes that do not match your line, so that the strand jams halfway, are the commonest problem — tell the seller your cord size before buying. The two side plaques must be symmetrical; heavier on one side and the strand turns on its own.

Most buyers have been working with strands a long time and want an uncommon top bead. Others come from having seen video of the processions and think the face is fierce in a good way. As a gift, it gives you something to talk about with friends from Taiwan or southern Fujian, who will recognize it at once; for someone who has never seen it, explain first that these are deity-generals of a procession, not ghosts. Designers buy it as material too, saying the structure of the face is interesting.