Pair of Enamelled Silver Fingernail Guards

This amusing pair of Chinese fingernail guards are of hammered silver sheet that has been engraved and pierced. The upper-sides are decorated with applied silver frogs that have been gilded (gold plated). They sit on lily pads that have been coloured with blue, white and red enamels.

The undersides are pierced and decorated with plum or prunus blossom scrolls.

Both are in fine condition without losses.

Fingernail guards or protectors were worn by a very elite group – Manchu court ladies of the late Qing dynasty. Long nails became synonymous with a life of luxury and having servants. As such long fingernails were valuable status symbols and so were protected with guards such as the two shown here. Typically not all the nails were protected but rather one, two or three on each hand. The Dowager Empress Cixi (1835-1908) was a very conspicuous wearer of such guards. She loved sitting for elaborately staged photographs and many of these show her wearing long fingernail guards but only ever two or three on each of her hands.

Traditionally, the Chinese had a strong belief that their bodies should remain whole for presentation in the afterlife. Duda (2002, p. 152) claims that members of the nobility would save their fingernails clippings throughout their lives so that they could be interred with them, along with any other body parts that might have been shed during their lifetimes, and given this attitude to their fingernails, that it should not be surprising that they might have wanted to protect them with fingernail guards.