Beaded Court Necklace

A court necklace (chaozhu) with red glass beads (imitating coral), large jadeite beads, green glass beads, and glass pendants. Two strands of glass beads hang off the right side of the necklace, while the single strand hangs off the left. Each of these strands contains two groups of five beads on a silk cord and end in a blue-purple glass pendant with a small white bead and gold connector. A flat blue silk cord with wan symbols and blue glass pendants hangs down the back of the wearer's neck as a counterweight. This counterweight strand is connected to the rest of the necklace by a jade-coloured glass bead. Near this bead, the necklace cord is wrapped with white, purple and blue silk thread and has two white circular connectors with four holes. Court necklaces have 108 beads divided into four sets of 27 beads, which are separated by large Buddha beads (futou) (Vollmer, Dressed to Rule, p. 52). This necklace, however, only contains 100 red beads, which means it may not be an official court necklace. The Huangchao liqi tushi album (2004.19.1.1.9) demonstrates how high ranking female members of the imperial court wore three court necklaces (two criss-crossed around her torso and one around her neck), with specific materials for each rank.