What the Motif Means: Butterfly, Lotus, Bamboo and Ginkgo in Chinese Jewellery

Most of the meaning in Chinese jewellery is carried by sound rather than by image. A butterfly is not primarily a butterfly: the word for it, dié, sounds like the word for eighty years, so the insect becomes a wish for long life. A lotus, lián, sounds like lián meaning continuous, so it becomes a wish for continuity. Once you know this, a great deal of what looks like decoration turns out to be a sentence.

This matters when you are choosing a piece, because the motif is usually the most deliberate decision the maker made. Below are the ones we work with most, what they mean, and where the meaning is older than the object.

Butterfly: longevity, and one specific love story

The butterfly carries two meanings that arrived at different times. The older is the pun on eighty years, a wish for a long life. The second is a love story: Liang Shanbo and Zhu Yingtai, two lovers separated in life and transformed into butterflies so they could stay together. It is often called China's Romeo and Juliet, and it is why paired butterflies rather than a single one are the standard motif on wedding jewellery.

A single butterfly, as on a brooch, leans on the longevity reading. A pair reads as the couple. If you are buying a butterfly as a gift for a partner, a pair says more than one does.

Lotus: purity that came out of mud

The lotus grows in still, muddy water and opens clean above it. That image has been used in Chinese writing for well over a thousand years as a description of integrity maintained in a compromised setting, and Buddhist thought took it up for the same reason.

The pun reinforces it. Lián (lotus) sounds like lián (continuous, joined), which is why two lotus flowers on one stem, bìngdì lián, is the classical image for a couple whose lives are joined. A lotus usually appears with more than one flower for this reason.

Bamboo: the joint that is also a principle

Bamboo is the most literal of the motifs. The word for a bamboo node, jié, is the same word as integrity or moral principle. The plant's segmented stem is therefore read as a series of principles held in sequence, one after another, up the whole length.

Bamboo also bends without breaking in wind, which gives the second half of the meaning: flexibility that does not become collapse. It is the motif most often given to someone starting something, a career or a long project, rather than to a couple.

Ginkgo: the tree that outlasted the others

Ginkgo is a living fossil; the species is older than the dinosaurs and was cultivated in temple grounds for its endurance. A ginkgo planted at a temple is expected to outlive the people who planted it, and the leaf is read as a wish for the same.

Ginkgo trees are also male and female as separate trees, so a pair of them is a pair in a literal sense rather than a decorative one. That is why the leaf appears so often on anniversary pieces, and why it is one of the few motifs where the botanical fact and the meaning line up exactly.

What is not classical

Two of the motifs we use are not traditional, and it is worth saying so rather than giving them a false pedigree.

The panda is a twentieth-century national symbol, not a classical motif. There is no Ming-dynasty panda jewellery. It is used because it is unmistakably Chinese to anyone outside China, which is a different job from carrying a wish.

The snowflake is a winter and Christmas motif borrowed from European jewellery. It has no classical reading. It exists because people buy gifts in December.

Both are legitimate reasons to make something. Neither is a heritage claim, and a maker who tells you otherwise is improvising.

How the motif shapes the making

A motif is not applied to a filigree piece; it determines how the piece can be built. A butterfly needs two wings that are symmetrical but not identical, so it is two separate assemblies joined at a body. A lotus needs petals that overlap in depth, so the layers have to be soldered in sequence from the inside out. A ginkgo leaf is a single plane with a fan of veins, which is closer to drawing than to assembly, and is why ginkgo pieces are usually the flattest in a range.

This is the practical argument for looking at the motif before the price. Two earrings of the same silver weight can require very different amounts of work depending on what they depict, because the number of joints changes with the shape. A mandala is expensive because it holds dozens of junctions in symmetry. A leaf ring is inexpensive because it has almost none.

Pieces where the motif is the point

• Butterfly Wing Brooch — one wing and a trailing chain, caught mid-turn, $199
• Butterfly Pearl Brooch — the same wing with a pearl set into the body, $189
• Double-Sided Enamel Lotus Drop Earrings — petals layered and enamelled on both faces, $169
• Ginkgo Leaf Earrings — a single plane with the veins drawn in wire, $109
• Panda Bamboo Earrings — the modern motif, with the classical one beside it, $249

If you want the longer version of how any of these are made, the definition article covers the four stages and how to tell hand-work from casting. For the metal itself, see 999, 925 and how to keep it whole.