Accouterments of beauty that tell a dynasty's tale

Gold earrings.[Photo provided to China Daily]

Weddings

The biggest occasion for the commission of gold and silver jewelry was weddings. The "three gold" - a must for a proper wedding - included a gold bracelet, gold ring and gold scarf-weight (hanging on the edge of a scarf to keep it in place) for the bride.

However, Zhao Liya, whose research on ancient Chinese gold and silver jewelry is considered definitive and who acted as a consultant for the exhibition at the Zhejiang Provincial Museum, says the jewelry was rarely meant to last.

"Gold, valuable as it is, was consistently considered less precious than jade in ancient China. This had a lot to do with the meaning that people had read into these two different things. While jade symbolized purity, humility and righteousness, gold mainly stood for wealth."

In other words, while a jade hairpin was meant for posterity, it was not unusual for a gold one to be melted and remolded into something new and presumably more trendy.

"There was very little gold and silver jewelry of the type that we can see today that has been passed down from millennium, or half of a millennium, ago," Zhao says. "What is on view at the exhibition is mainly from underground storage, buried there when their owners fled the prolonged wars between Song and another rising - and much more brutal - power, the Mongols.