Featured Sterling broken pottery pendant, can you tell me anything about it?

Hi all! Picked up this pendant today for a few dollars, had a feeling it was silver but no markings (was almost black with tarnish). It did test as silver. Can you tell me anything about the pottery shard? I assume Asian, but have no idea. These pendants are usually artisan/relatively modern right? Measures 2.25"L x 1.5"W, I added the snake chain. Thanks

 

Jewellery made from Chinese/Japanese ceramic shards are a thing.

 

Yup, sherd jewellery. The pieces can be several hundred years old. That's a chrysanthemum, so probably Japanese.

 

It is very nice and I don't see where it is broken...

 

It is a piece from something larger, like a porcelain plate or cup, that got broken. It has been filed down to make the shape regular & the edges smooth.

 

Ah, now I understand, thank you Bronwen! The word "broken" refers to the pottery, not to the pendant

 

My Mother brought back many of those from Indonesia. That is a particularly nice one. I am glad that make use of those pieces.

 

Thanks everyone! Agreed @Lark it's a nice way to preserve history in jewelry

 

That is a nice one! As to where they get the shards I heard somewhere recently some of it is collected from the old kiln sites. Anything that came out of the kiln damaged (or when from an imperial kiln just slightly imperfect even) they would smash it. So every kiln site has large areas of shards now buried beneath the surface. These waste pits are actually how much of the academic research is accomplished on when and where things were made. Turns out that a huge amount of the worlds information on Chinese ceramics was wrong until real academic archaeological digs were finally done in China on these sites to correct the record.

 

This is really interesting, thanks for sharing!