Five Emperor Coin String

Five Emperor Coin String

$29.00 USD

Five coins struck in Qing reign patterns on braided red cord — the plainest form of an object hung in Chinese doorways for three centuries.

Made
Struck and strung in Zhejiang, China
Materials
Five brass coins, Shunzhi through Jiaqing patterns · Braided red cord with a hand-tied knot
Size
Coins 25 mm each, full drop about 200 mm
Weight
45 g
Ships
From Asia. Cost by region, worked out in the cart.

Laid under a threshold, hung on a doorframe, or kept in a wallet or a till. The five coins stand for the five reigns of the Qing high period, and the set is read as a sequence rather than as five separate objects.

What it is

Five brass coins on a braided red cord. The coins carry the reign marks of Shunzhi, Kangxi, Yongzheng, Qianlong and Jiaqing — the five Qing emperors whose reigns run from 1644 to 1820, a stretch the tradition treats as a single unbroken period.

These are reproductions struck in the old patterns, not excavated antiques. Anyone selling you five genuine Qing coins on a cord for this price is selling you reproductions and calling them something else.

Where it is traditionally put

  • Under or beside a threshold the household crosses daily
  • On a doorframe, hung flat against the wood
  • In a wallet, a till, or the drawer where the accounts are kept

This is an interior object, unlike the mirrors and plaques that go on the outside of a building, and there is no convention about which way it faces.

What we are not saying

We make no claim about what it does. These are five struck brass coins on a cord.

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