Quick Answer: What Is the Double Coin Motif?
The double coin motif (双钱纹, shuāngqiánwén) shows two Chinese cash shapes. Look for two round outlines, each with a square center. The outlines may overlap, or the coins may hang apart as parts of a larger picture.[1][2]
- Shape. Square centers help distinguish coin shapes from two ordinary rings.
- Meaning. Coins can suggest wealth. A pair can also stand for completeness when the other motifs supply the words.[2]
- Material. Artists could depict coins in ink or make the outline from real coins held together on a frame.[1][3]
Read the pair alongside nearby figures, words and the purpose of the object.
A coin design can be the whole ornament or one part of a sentence made from pictures. A Qing hanging ornament makes the coin outline its silhouette. On a Taiwanese ritual print, the pair helps turn a bat and a written character into a wish.
How to Recognize the Double Coin Motif
Trace the rims before reading the centers. In an overlapping pair, the rim of one disk may disappear at the crossing, while both square openings remain visible. An illustrated study of the Lin Family Mansion and Garden in New Taipei shows this arrangement in a 2009 ink study of the pattern.[3]
A pair is only one way to use a cash outline. The Eight Treasures in Chinese decoration can include a single coin emblem. A border can also run through a continuous chain of coin shapes. Coin rims look different from the angular outlines of fangsheng interlocking diamonds. Look for two rims that form a distinct unit, such as the two centered on the Lin garden design.
An Ornament Made from Real Coins
Penn Museum catalogs a Qing double-coin ornament held together with metal and undyed string. Its maker threaded actual cash coins onto a circular frame. A lantern-shaped drop and two ball-shaped drops hang below it, all assembled from coins. The museum dates the object to the eighteenth or nineteenth century and identifies coins from the Qianlong, Jiaqing and Daoguang reigns.[1]
The small coins are building units, while the larger silhouette is the design they create. Han dynasty money trees use coin imagery at a different scale, as part of an upright bronze funerary object.
Why Two Coins Can Mean Completeness
A Taiwanese sheet of longevity spirit money at the University of Michigan Museum of Art has a large shou character above a stylized bat. A coin hangs from each wing. The Chinese word for bat, 蝠 (fú), sounds like 福 (fú), meaning blessing. The phrase for two coins, 双钱 (shuāngqián), sounds close to 双全 (shuāngquán), meaning both things are fully present. The bat, character and coin pair combine to express blessings and long life together (福寿双全, fú shòu shuāngquán).[2]
The museum also preserves a carved block used to print longevity money. The design could be printed in red over a metallic foil patch on paper. Worshippers offered the sheets to deities on occasions that included a deity’s birthday and to give thanks or ask for long life. In five bats surrounding shou, a different grouping changes what the bats contribute.[2][4]
Coin Patterns in Garden Architecture
Coin outlines also work at building scale. The Hong Kong Palace Museum identifies a lattice design based on circular cash with square centers. In a window, the open parts let light through, so the geometry is visible from either side.[5]
The Lin Family Mansion and Garden study gives the paired design its own reading. It connects rounded edges with tact and the square with upright conduct. That interpretation is recorded for this garden and its pattern. Another object may give the same geometry a different role.[3]
FAQs About the Double Coin Motif
How does the double coin motif differ from fangsheng?
Double coins have round rims, often with square openings. Fangsheng interlocking diamonds usually have two angular outlines whose sides cross. Compare the outer outlines first.
Do two coins always mean double wealth?
A pair may express a wish for prosperity. On some objects, such as Taiwanese longevity prints, the pair supplies a sound cue for the completeness of a wish expressed with other motifs.[2]
出典
[1] Penn Museum. Ornament, Coin, object 29-164-9
[2] University of Michigan Museum of Art. Longevity Spirit Money from Taiwan, object 2008/1.171
[3] Lin Family Mansion and Garden. The Spiritual Symbols of the Lin Family Mansion and Garden, pp. 68–69
[4] University of Michigan Museum of Art. Block for Printing Longevity Spirit Money, object 2006/2.41.1
[5] Hong Kong Palace Museum. The Ways in Patterns: Lattice Windows