Feng Shui Jewellery

The Heart Sutra, carved in full around a cylinder of obsidian. The Heart Sutra is the shortest of the great Buddhist texts, some 260 characters that can be chanted in a minute, and it has been copied, carried and recited for over a thousand...

A pixiu crouched on a ruyi, carved from one piece of obsidian. The pixiu (貔貝) is the wealth guardian that takes fortune in and has no way to let it go. The ruyi (如意) it rests on is the curled sceptre whose name means...

A red cord braided in the vajra knot, with a small obsidian hulu. The red string is the oldest protective charm in Chinese dress, tied on at a birth year, a wedding, or the start of something uncertain. The hulu (葫芦), the calabash gourd,...

The laughing Buddha, carved in black obsidian. He is Budai, the wandering monk of Chinese folk tradition, taken as a form of Maitreya, the Buddha still to come. The open mouth and the bare belly are the whole point. He is kept for good...

A dragon in obsidian, rising through cloud over the sea. The carving is the old motif of the dragon over the four seas, 龙腾四海, the creature of the east and of rain, kept for ambition, authority and rising standing. The figure is polished to...

A dragon coiled across a tablet of smoky, see-through obsidian. The dragon is the one creature in the Chinese zodiac that never lived, and the only one that ranks with emperors. It stands for ambition, authority and the kind of luck that comes to...

A pixiu carved in polished obsidian, hung on a beaded cord. The pixiu (貔貅) is the wealth guardian of Chinese feng shui, a winged creature said to feed on gold and silver and, having no way to let it out, to keep every bit...

The guardian of your birth year, carved in translucent obsidian. In Chinese Buddhist tradition each of the twelve animals is watched over by one of eight Buddhas and bodhisattvas, the benmingfo (本命佛), and the custom is to wear your own. Thousand-armed Guanyin for the...

The guardian of your birth year, carved in translucent obsidian. In Chinese Buddhist tradition each of the twelve animals is watched over by one of eight Buddhas and bodhisattvas, the benmingfo (本命佛), and the custom is to wear your own. Thousand-armed Guanyin for the...

The guardian buddha for your birth year, carved in obsidian. In Chinese Buddhist tradition each of the twelve animals is watched over by one of eight figures: Thousand-armed Guan Yin for the rat, Akasagarbha for the ox and tiger, Manjushri for the rabbit, Samantabhadra...

The guardian buddha for your birth year, carved in obsidian. In Chinese Buddhist tradition each of the twelve animals is watched over by one of eight figures: Thousand-armed Guan Yin for the rat, Akasagarbha for the ox and tiger, Manjushri for the rabbit, Samantabhadra...

The guardian buddha for your birth year, carved in obsidian. In Chinese Buddhist tradition each of the twelve animals is watched over by one of eight figures: Thousand-armed Guan Yin for the rat, Akasagarbha for the ox and tiger, Manjushri for the rabbit, Samantabhadra...

The guardian buddha for your birth year, carved in obsidian. In Chinese Buddhist tradition each of the twelve animals is watched over by one of eight figures: Thousand-armed Guan Yin for the rat, Akasagarbha for the ox and tiger, Manjushri for the rabbit, Samantabhadra...

The guardian buddha for your birth year, carved in obsidian. In Chinese Buddhist tradition each of the twelve animals is watched over by one of eight figures: Thousand-armed Guan Yin for the rat, Akasagarbha for the ox and tiger, Manjushri for the rabbit, Samantabhadra...

A pavilion among pines, carved into a tablet of jade.This is shanshui, the mountain-and-water landscape Chinese painters have returned to for a thousand years: somewhere high, quiet and far from the city, kept as a picture of where you would go if you could....

A smooth tablet of pale jade, left uncarved.No engraving, no symbol, just the stone and the light moving across it. Jade is kept close in Chinese homes for calm and continuity, and an uncarved piece makes that its whole argument. The cloudiness inside is...

A jade circle barely wider than a fingertip.This is the bi disc reduced to its smallest form, the open centre still carrying the old meaning of a clear path. It is the piece for someone who wants jade on every day rather than for...

Two charms in one carving: the pixiu, and the hulu gourd beneath it.The pixiu is the winged creature of Chinese myth with an appetite for gold and no way to pass it, so what it takes in, it keeps. The hulu does the same...

Jade on a hand-tied red cord. Nothing metal.Red cord and jade is the oldest pairing in Chinese jewellery, the stone for steadiness and the thread for connection and luck. Red is the colour worn at every threshold in Chinese life, at new years, weddings,...

A full disc of pale jade, taijitu at the centre.Yin and yang are not opposites at war. They are two halves that need each other, each carrying a seed of the other, and the eight trigrams around them are the eight ways that balance...