Personal jewellery in China often takes the form, or bears the images, of the animals, real or fabulous, and the numerous ritual and symbolical objects of Chinese art and culture. A dragon or phoenix may form a bracelet or decorate a headdress or a hairpin. The "precious ornaments," or eight Buddhist emblems of happy augury, are strung with rows of pearls or used separately. It should be noticed that the first of the "precious ornaments" is a round jewel wreathed with a fillet, and that innumerable works of art represent the dragon pursuing or grasping the flaming jewel of omnipotence. Emblems often indicate the rank and office of the wearer, from the emperor downwards. Special ornaments were worn by the Manchu or Chinese ladies, and various limitations were imposed by sumptuary laws.
Gold and silver plaques were manipulated in several ways. They might be pressed into moulds, hammered in relief, cut into openwork patterns or engraved. The dexterity of the Chinese craftsman has carried the art of filigree (q.v.) in the precious
metals to a degree of intricacy and minuteness unsurpassed else where. It is used for the most elaborate headdresses and for all kinds of personal ornaments. Jewellery in gold and silver is often enamelled—gold generally in light blue obtained from copper, and silver in dark blue from a cobaltiferous ore; both colours are also used together.
The gold filigree bracelet (P1. VIII., fig. I) is in the form of two dragons. The headdress (P1. VIII., fig. 2) was worn by a Manchu lady of high rank. It has a wire foundation covered with silk and mounted with panels of silver-gilt filigree in the form of bats (for happiness) and peaches (for longevity). It is overlaid with kingfisher plumes and enriched with amber, jadeite, ame thysts, coral and pearls. The cap of state (Pl. VIII., fig. 3), from the Summer Palace, Peking, is also of silver-gilt filigree with king fisher plumes arid enrichment of pearls and coral. The ornament includes figures of Taoist immortals, birds and butterflies. The bride's headdress (Pl. VIII., fig. 4) is of the same materials, show ing a temple-pavilion, dragons and phoenixes. The chatelaine (Pl. VIII., fig. 5) has a row of silver-gilt toilet articles. There are various forms of hairpins, hair-ornaments, cap-ornaments, ear rings and buttons in silver and silver-gilt, with jewels, enamels and kingfisher plumes.
The Indian practice of inlaying precious stones in finger-rings and plaques of jade was copied in China, where jade and jadeite rank among the most valued of precious stones. Figure-subjects_ are sometimes carried out in gems and semi-precious stones, en crusted on plaques of white jade. Small personal ornaments of many kinds have been carved in jade. For Egyptian Jewellery see