White Jade Plum Blossom Ring

Count the petals. There are five, and in Chinese that is the point of the flower.

梅開五福, the plum opens five blessings. The five petals are read as the 五福, the five things a life is supposed to contain: long years, enough money, good health, a love of doing right, and a quiet end at the finish of it. It is the oldest list of what a good life looks like in Chinese thought, older than most of the gods, and the plum blossom is its shorthand because it has exactly the right number of petals. Paint five blossoms on a New Year scroll and you have said all of it without writing a word.

The stone is white, which is deliberate. In Chinese jewellery colourless white is the scholar's choice, the one that signals composure instead of money, and it is why the blossom here is left plain while the gold is kept to the stamens and the two small flowers on the shoulders. The band itself is cast as a bare branch, so the whole ring reads as one twig in flower.

For a birthday, a new year, or somebody starting again. The five blessings are a wish for a whole life and not for one good week, which makes this an easy gift for a mother, a grandmother or a friend turning a decade. It is also small and quiet enough to wear daily, so it does not sit in a drawer waiting for an occasion.