Page 304 - Chinese Art, Vol II By Stephen W. Bushell

CHAPTER XI.
Jewellery.

Jewellery in China is scarcely of sufficient importance to figure
under a separate heading in a little handbook on art. Still it is not
unrepresented in the museum, and the authority of Mr. Alabaster's
Catalogue of Chinese Objects may serve to strengthen an apology
for a few desultory remarks on the subject, which can hardly be
entirely passed by.
Jewellery is much employed in common life by the Chinese, as in
most other eastern countries, as a convenient means of investment
of their savings. In the absence of any gold and silver coinage,
the precious metals are most readily kept in this way, being under
the constant supervision of the wearer as portable property. He
deems solidity the most desirable quality of the plain rings and
bangles which are the usual forms, and looks on weight and purity
of metal as more likely to retain their value than artistic workman-
ship. Sometimes a plain flexible rod or band of gold or silver is
worn round the neck or arm, serving like the gold chains and rings
worn by our own knights in the middle ages, as a present proof of
respectability, and a ready resource in case of emergency. Bullion
is more safely carried in this way, than as shoe-shaped ingots in a
purse tied to the girdle, and pieces can be easily snipped off from the
ends as occasion requires. All objects of this kind are made of pure
metal without any alloy. The jeweller stamps the name of his
shop inside the ring or bangle and thus binds himself, by guild law
and custom, to buy it back at any time by weight, without ques-
tioning the quality of the material.