I use many Chinese carved jade pendants in my custom necklaces and I had wanted to do a post about the differences that make one jade pendant: ‘good-better-best’. So I asked Bob to photograph a number of pendants from my collection. While he was photographing them, he pointed out that there was one which stood out from all the rest…
[ click on images to enlarge …. photos by: RP (Bob) Birt ]
While the quality of the carving and the beautiful translucence of the large 18th century white jade pendant makes it very desirable, it is the use of both forms of the ancient swastika symbol within the wings of the bat that makes it so rare.
The ancient right facing symbol has a huge stigma for Westerners (as I wrote about in one of my early blogs Chinese Wedding Set-Jade and Silver pictured below) … So most of the carvings we find in the west use the left facing form.
There are hundreds of web pages devoted to the symbol for those who would like to research it further… (including the addition of the symbol into the Chinese language in 693 AD) But this piece is an excellent example of how the symbols were appropriately used to represent the fullness of good fortune.
Some of the other pendants Bob photographed can be seen in his gallery [link]
