落款Hallmarks behind the hairpins

Most of the hairpins in our collections were originally bought from a silversmith’s shop or jeweller’s. The shop would often have their own signature that they left on the hairpins they sold. This would show who made the hairpin and sometimes also the purity of the metal used. These would be similar to the hallmarks placed on silver and gold objects made in Europe. European hallmarks on precious metals date back to the 13th century and would include the maker’s name, the purity, the place where the purity was assayed, and perhaps a date.

In Chinese hairpins, in addition to the name of the shop and the metal purity they might also mark other important clues about the history of the hairpin — clues such as the individual maker’s name, or even the name of the person who owned the hairpin. If we know how to read these signs we can discover some of the story behind the hairpins.

Here are two hairpins that were acquired at different times and in different places. The stamped mark on the back, 双奐, is identical in every detail, so we can assume that these two hairpins were made in the same workshop somewhere in China. The one on the left comes from a grave and there was originally a lot of corrosion covering the details of the mark. To make sure the marks were identical, the corrosion was carefully cleaned under a microscope.

There were some minute flaws and scratches in the steel punch used to make the mark — giving a so-called “tool signature”. The tool signature is exactly the same in each mark. It may be possible to trace other hairpins from this workshop using this tool signature. If we look carefully at hairpins we can tell an interesting story about their origins.

Some stamps give the name of the silversmith’s shop so we can trace the town, street or shop that the hairpin came from. Look at the punched marks in the gallery below. Some of them come from matching pairs of hairpins and therefore have the same mark on them. Can you find them?

Sometimes the individual silversmith who made the hairpin would mark his name on it to show that it was he who made it. Perhaps some silversmiths were known for their exquisite designs or quality of workmanship.

These stamps really are hallmarks in the European sense. They mark the purity of the metal, such as “pure silver”. In Chinese culture gold was not usually alloyed with other metals when making jewellery, so there were not so many different “qualities” to test for, such as 9, 14 and 18 carat gold. Unlike in European hallmarking, where an independent office controlled by the king checked the purity of the metal, the purity marks on the hairpins were probably put there by the maker or the jewellery shop. It is not clear what penalties there were, if any, for cheating and selling poor quality metal under a false mark. However, in a small community in Qing dynasty China a bad reputation would have been a disaster for the business concerned.

Some hairpins show marks or inscriptions that were not made by a professional punch. Here, they may have been made by the owner of the hairpin or the person who gave the hairpin as a gift. On the hairpin below the owner must have been a girl named 月枝 (Yuezhi). It is a girl’s name, so we can at least guess something about who owned and wore this hair ornament.

Very occasionally, a hairpin bears a date. The hairpin below is dated 甲辰年. In the Chinese calendar this could be 1904, 1844 or 1784. This hairpin is very special because from this date we can guess how old it is.

A steel punch is used to make the mark. The left stamp is 陽刻 (yángkè): the characters are in positive relief — they stand proud of the surface. The right one is 陰刻 (yīnkè): the characters are in negative relief — sunk into the metal. These terms are familiar to westerners as the yin and yang of the Tai Chi symbol, the philosophical opposites of positive and negative.

In these examples the characters are engraved or incised (cut into the metal). When metal is engraved a narrow strip of the metal is removed with a sharp tool. This is much more skilful work than using a punch, because it is very easy to make a mistake and seriously damage the jewellery.

This is a very simple but sometimes very effective way of writing on metal. It requires little skill and very simple tools — it can be done with a nail and a small hammer. A line of punched dots outlines the characters. Only good eyesight is required.