Good Luck & Protection

A beckoning cat carved in cinnabar, hung beneath a small 福 charm. Cinnabar is the fire-red stone of the Chinese tradition, long worn to guard vitality and keep good fortune close. Its colour alone was considered protective, the red that meets whatever the day...

A bar of shungite, faceted and pointed at both ends. Polished, shungite goes from a dull coal-black to something closer to gunmetal, with a soft shine that does not flash. It is the same carbon rock from Karelia that is usually sold raw, here...

A plain agate tablet, orange and red in bands, on a beaded cord. The plain tablet, the wu shi pai, is a Chinese jade form given to travellers and to the young leaving home. Its face is left uncarved on purpose: wu shi means...

A rough piece of shungite, drilled and hung on black cord. Shungite is not a crystal but a rock, black as coal and one of the oldest stones ever cut for wearing, close to two billion years old. It comes from the Karelia region...

A dragon's claw closed around a glass bead, in antique-finish steel. The dragon and the pearl are the oldest pair in Chinese art. The dragon chases the pearl across temple roofs and robe hems, and the pearl stands for the thing most worth having:...

The five emperor coins, worn as an open band. The coins come from the reigns of Shunzhi, Kangxi, Yongzheng, Qianlong and Jiaqing, the first hundred and fifty years of the Qing dynasty, when the empire was at its most settled. Strung together they have...

The six-pointed star, two triangles interlaced, cast in titanium steel. One triangle points up, one points down, and where they lock together they make a single form. Across many traditions the hexagram has stood for the meeting of opposites: heaven and earth, fire and...

The two-faced Buddha, one face serene and one wrathful, cast in titanium steel. In Buddhist art the calm face and the fierce face are two expressions of the same care. The serene half is compassion, the patience that waits and forgives. The wrathful half...

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...

A ring of jade with an open centre.The bi disc is one of the oldest forms in Chinese jade, carved and buried with the dead for four thousand years before anyone thought to wear one. The hole at its middle stands for heaven, and...

A jade disc carved with the eight trigrams.The bagua is the map feng shui works from, eight trigrams ringed around a still centre, and it usually hangs above a door to settle a room. Carved small in jade it does the same job at...

Bronzite, unakite and red jasper, three earth stones for the long haul. Bronzite is a dark brown stone with a metallic sheen that shifts as it moves, long kept for composure and for holding your ground without heat. Unakite is a granite of green...

The Pixiu (貔貅), wealth guardian of Chinese feng shui, paired with unakite and red agate. A winged creature said to feed on gold and silver and, having no way to release what it takes in, to keep every bit of fortune it draws toward...

Red agate on a knotted red string, with a single disc of pale green jade. The red string is the oldest of Chinese protective threads, tied on for luck and for keeping the wearer bound to good fortune. Red agate carries the same warm...

Rose quartz with a small gold hulu (葫芦) charm. Rose quartz is the stone of the open heart, the love offered to others and the gentler kind offered to yourself. Its pale pink deepens in the light and softens again in shade, which is...