Pieces of heaven

Personal adornments in China were rich in symbolism to those who wore them

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Beyond functioning as a decoration, many of the smaller objects on view in the University of Hawaii-Manoa exhibition "Excelling the Work of Heaven: Personal Adornment from China," on view through Dec. 14, were rich in symbolism to their wearers.

The wearer of this toggle, depicting the fairy White Wave, must have found it important to live up to the myth's moral that kindness, respect and virtue are rewarded.

The toggle is in the shape of a snail shell that opens to reveal the fairy, who in lore was found by a lonely young farmer, who gently carried the creature home and fed it.

When he returned home from work the next day, he was surprised to find dinner waiting for him. This was repeated every day, until one morning, curiosity getting better of him, he peeked through a crack in the door to see a beautiful woman emerging from the shell. By the light emanating for the shell, he knew she was a moon goddess and dared not approach her, content to keep peeking from the crack in the door.

One day, as White Wave was cleaning, she spotted him and, upset that her secret had been revealed, told him she must leave, although she left her shell behind with instructions to call her name should he ever be in need.

He remembered her words and, during a time of poor harvest, when he was starving, called her name. Suddenly, light poured from the shell, and with it, enough rice to last for the next harvest. The farmer soon married and was never lonely or hungry again.

On display "Excelling the Work of Heaven: Personal Adornment from China": » On view: 10:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. weekdays and noon to 4 p.m. Sundays through Dec. 14, with docent tours offered at 11 a.m. and 2 p.m. tomorrow and 2 p.m. each Sunday » Place: University of Hawaii-Manoa Art Gallery » Admission: Free » Call: 956-6888 or e-mail gallery@hawaii.edu » Online: www.hawaii.edu/artgallery. Click on "Educational resources" to access a student guide that covers history, symbols and myths. » Also: The 150-page, color catalog is $25, available at the gallery. To order by mail, add $7 shipping and make checks or money orders payable to University of Hawaii Art Gallery, 2535 McCarthy Mall, Honolulu 96822.

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The ancient Chinese knew bling, and their belongings would have rivaled the showiness of any modern-day Americans', down to toggles attached to clothing that look exactly like today's cell-phone leashes or purse jewelry.

And then, in the Chinese Cultural Revolution of the mid-20th century, it all disappeared, destroyed by a regime intent on obliterating the relics of a feudal past in the belief that a new, equal and progressive society would emerge from the ashes. Jewelry and other markers of class stratification were destroyed, melted down or sold abroad to finance Mao Zedong's Great Leap Forward.

Into this bleak scenario came antique dealers Susan and Aven Shyn of San Francisco, who were among the first U.S. collectors allowed in the early 1970s to buy boxed lots of mixed jewelry, eventually amassing 6,000 pieces. The couple sought pieces true to their form, function and context, in hope that they would one day serve as a record of a lost past.

Nearly 40 years later their prescience is rewarding all who step into the University of Hawaii Art Gallery, where nearly 700 exquisite objects of silver, jade, kingfisher feathers, ivory, precious stones and coral made during late imperial China (1368-1911) comprise the exhibition "Excelling the Work of Heaven: Personal Adornment from China." The show continues through Dec. 14.

The craftsmanship is described by gallery director Lisa A. Yoshihara as "excelling the work of heaven," based on a Yuan dynasty poem by Zhao Mengfu acknowledging man's ability to transform common materials into objects rivaling creation itself.

In three-dimensional craft, the artisans were able to experiment and achieve perfection in a way that was frowned upon in the two-dimensional fine art-forms of calligraphy and painting practiced by the literati, according to Kate A. Lingley, assistant professor of art and history at UH, who researched the pieces and wrote the descriptions in the exhibition catalog.

"The literati ideal was that of the cultivated amateur. You were not supposed to be trained; the goal was self-expression because you were not painting for anyone else but yourself. The idea of technical excellence was only for people who sold in the marketplace."

Craftsmen, free of the mores ascribed to the scholarly class, were able to push their technical expertise to extremes, resulting in complex pieces with moving parts, such as a phoenix brooch with wings and a tail that flutters with a light breeze, or toggles meant to hold treasured belongings, from sewing needles to ear-wax pickers, hidden behind decorative forms such as a fish or pea pod. These might be compared to an ancient form of the Swiss army knife, with all its portable gadgetry.

Testing the limits of their abilities, the craftsmen created treasures of gold, silver, bronze, coral, shell, mother-of-pearl, wood, glass, amber, ivory, lacquer, pearl, jade and perhaps the most fragile material of all, kingfisher feathers that, affixed to metal, offered a vivid blue unmatched by any other material. It's remarkable that they still exist, in pristine condition.

Yoshihara, who welcomed journalists from China to view the exhibition, said they were amazed to see the breadth of the collection, including many objects they had never seen before.

"As an art historian it was amazing to be able to handle these pieces and study them, to be able to translate the inscriptions," said Lingley. This called for a powerful magnifying glass to read characters little bigger than the commas on this page. In some cases she found pure gibberish in the guise of Buddhist texts, as if lifted off a page and cut and pasted in any old way. Other texts retell popular folk stories, in bawdy fashion.

"It makes you wonder who that was intended for," Lingley said.

Objects in the collection represent the full range of Chinese society, from the imperial household to those of modest means, for whom such belongings, far from being random bling, represented a person's station in life, wishes and sense of community.

Images of animals, plants and mythological figures were chosen for symbolic, associative and evocative powers, and for auspicious wishes to protect the wearer, whether to encourage a happy marriage or the birth of a son.

Entire villages would also come together, donating a single coin that, collectively, could be melted down to create a lock for a village newborn, symbolic of binding the child to earth and to life.

"If you were of modest means, you were able to pull resources together," said Lingley, who said many of the locks bear the names of participating families in the back or on dangling leaves "to invoke the protection of 100 families."

Other pieces of jewelry, such as the bird figures on a young government official's hat, reflected their status in society.

"There was a whole culture of gentlemen who revered the archaic past, who would not have dreamed of leaving the house without wearing particular objects," said Yoshihara. "They had to keep appearances up."

In light of today's fashion excesses, one wonders how far society will go before a backlash occurs, but with Maoist society as a guide, destroying objects does little to tamp down human aspiration as well as the need to assign meaning to objects, whether a jade amulet or Prada purse.