White Copper Yellow Jambhala Pendant (Two Colour Options)

Two colours side by side, and it is worth not rushing at the gold. The gold piece is a warm electroplated yellow; the silver one is white copper in its own colour. These are not the same object with a coat of paint on one of them. One colour is deposited on the surface and one belongs to the metal, and over the years they change in opposite directions.

Gold pleases people. It goes with warm clothing and with dark wooden beads. The drawback is that plating wears, and it wears in predictable places: the edges, the back, the inside of the pendant hole. The silver piece does not fear wear, because wear on it is invisible beyond a little dullness, but it does oxidise. Bright white turns greyish white, and after another stretch of wearing it settles into a dim, dark tone, which is the stage people who like old things tend to prefer.

The figure comes out of the same mould either way: one face, two arms, the jewel in the right hand, the mongoose in the left, half lotus, a conch beneath the feet. One mould and two finishes, so the test is in the finishing. The gold has to be plated evenly, with no nodules gathering in the hollows. The silver has to be polished through, with no pits left in the deep lines. Set the two side by side, and if the silver one shows more detail than the gold, the mould is sound and the plating is simply thick enough to have filled the shallow places.

To judge plating, look at three spots. Behind the ears, between the fingers, and the inside of the pendant hole. Current does not reach those places well, so the layer is thinnest there. Turn the piece in your hand, and if all three match the front, the plating is solid. If they look dark or reddish, the base copper is showing through, and within a few months it will go patchy. Where the layer is thin, a fingernail drawn across it will feel the roughness underneath.

Which one to take depends on how you wear things. Every day, sweating freely, with no intention of looking after it: the silver. Now and then, with certain clothes, wanting that small bright note: the gold. If you want both, wear one and keep the other, but not in the same box, where they rub and both go dull. Gold photographs better than it looks in the hand, and it is less yellow in person than in the picture. Do not buy the two as a pair for someone either. Two of the same design worn together look like two halves of one bar.