Jade & Toggles

A jade frog, warm from a pocket. Chinese jade carvings and toggles here are small 19th and 20th century pieces in jade, hardstone and wood, made to hang from a sash or rest in the palm. Toggles worked as counterweights, holding a purse or pipe case on its cord at the belt, much as netsuke did in Japan. Their subjects carry wishes: fish for plenty, bats for good fortune, a scholar and his poem for learning.

Carvings here include rabbits, rats, mice, frogs, a ram with its young, an elephant with a monkey, dragons on vines and coins, a phoenix, a kylin, a mythical beast with a turtle, a Budai, a money god and a man carrying a load. Wooden toggles take the form of shoes and frogs, and an archaic-style jade belt buckle and a carved plaque join them. Keep one by the keyboard as a worry stone or line several along a windowsill. Small enough to hold, which is rather the point.