Fertility Symbols on Middle Eastern, South Asian Jewelry

Throughout the Middle East and South Asia the symbols of ancestors, living family members and hoped-for descendants influence the jewelry artisan's work.  For example, this very simple piece from that region has components that we could find almost anywhere in that enormous space on the planet.

Ethiopian Silver Pendant with Fertility Symbols of Male and Female Anatomy

This old Ethiopian silver metal plaque is fabricated in one of the traditional hand crafted methods. It is called in the West *repousse.* Working in this technique, the silversmith uses a mallet or pounce and pounds or pushes the metal sheet into the indented figures on a wood board or hard thick metal plate. Usually the designs carved into the wood or metal template are fairly simple such as circles, thick lines, stars or flowers. This particular piece shows the softer edges on the florets, lines and circles that are more common on plaques that have been pounced on a wood board. In fact, this plaque very likely was held tightly across a carved piece of wood that had raised designs and this silver or silver alloy sheet was pounced until the raised designs on the wood template shaped their metal twins on this piece of silver. Then the sides and backing were soldered to this repousse face and the bails attached in the same way.

The naturalistic male and female fertility symbols were made separately. No piece of the jewelry item is without a backing of the same material. The spherical male symbols and the hemispherical female symbols are hollow. The connecting rings do not appear to be made of the same grade of silver as the rest of the piece. I suspect that none of the silver is more than 60 percent silver. Nevertheless, the patina enhances the appearance of this old piece. It gives the impression of having once had enameling applied to the spaces between the designs on the plaque. Within the culture in which it was created, it was no doubt worn by a female, married or approaching marriage. It more than likely served as a temple ornament worn attached by a cord to the veil or braids of hair just above the top of the ear.

This piece was included in a purchase of Yemeni collectible jewelry. Many Ethiopian and Yemeni jewelry styles are cross-cultural.

The chain is a modern antiqued silver plated chain and clasp.

Measurements:
Chain: 21.5 inches (54 cm) long. Plaque and symbolic pendants: 3.5 inches (8.9 cm) long. 1.25 inches (3.2 cm) wide at widest point.

This piece is available at: http://www.artfire.com/ext/shop/product_view/craftsofthepast/4363736/

Expansion of Turkoman Khanates in Medieval Times

During the late Middle Ages, just about the same time that the Renaissance had begun in Europe, the Khans began to extend their power into Russia, Persia and India.  They ruled areas within the borders of those countries as we see the named countries on the map today.  The borders were not the same in that era, of course.

The point of this blog is not about power but about cultural influence.  We have written recently about the major sport of the Mongol people which naturally takes place on horseback. We know it in the West as polo.  Among the Turkmen in Afghanistan it is called buz kashi.

As the khanates expanded the sport went with them.  The Mongols who settled in Persia influenced the people they found there.  I will point to just one great example of that in this blog.

Antique Persian Miniature Handpainted on Mother of Pearl from Iran

This antique fine art is painted with a very fine brush on mother of pearl. The scene is a classic scene showing the Mongol Persian invention of the game of polo. Men on horseback engage in a mock combat to make goals with an object that they bat around with sticks while remaining on horseback. 

The horses must be swift and agile. The artists varied in their ability to paint the horses as they really were. After all, the artist is not usually the athlete who engages in contact sport. 

This piece of art is not only traditional in its content, but also in the technique of creating the Isfahan school of miniatures in the 1800s. 

The artist used the traditional technique of building up layers of lacquered pigment. The underlay is of thinly applied gold. Then the artist goes to work with a brush made of a single hair for much of the scene, especially the plants and outlines of the figures. 

The under layer of gold pigment gives the art a special glow that adds to the luminescence of the pearl base. 

The Isfahan school of Persian miniature art flourished from the 1400s to the 1700s when it was at its height. After that time, the masters began to explore more naturalistic themes and departed from the action narratives as their subject, usually a scene based on one of the cultural mythic subjects such as warfare, hunting, or court scenes. 

The mother of pearl became a desirable base for the masters of the 1800s; this piece fits into that later period of the Isfahan school of Persian miniatures. I collected it in Teheran, Iran in 1971. This particular piece was evidently chipped at the time of the painting or in the shaping of the original piece of shell. The chip is old and shares the same patina of the overall piece. The bottom outline of the painting ends above the tiny chip. 

Measurements: 4.4 cm (1.75 inches) x 6.6 cm (2.6 inches)   More information at this link: http://www.artfire.com/ext/shop/product_view/craftsofthepast/4353627

Upcycling, Re-ordering and Downsizing Older Turkoman Jewelry

Upcycling, Re-ordering and Downsizing Older Turkoman Jewelry

The old traditional jewelry has often been re-purposed or has had parts removed from it, or in other cases, the original order of the beads or pendants has been changed.  This piece was originally a belt buckle.

Read the account of how it has been changed:
This Turkoman silver brooch was originally a belt buckle. It is made of a thick silver plaque with overall floral patterns. The raised center is inscribed with Arabic calligraphy. The inset jewels are red glass, highly prized in Turkoman jewelry. The crafter of this piece was inventive in that when this piece was no longer being used by a male to fasten his belt, the maker cut the silver belt loops from the back of the piece, filed and sanded the stumps smooth and attached a clasp to the back top of the piece. It makes a rustic but very charming and novel brooch for a casual jacket. 

My husband picked up this piece on a trip to Moscow in 1999. The bazaars in Moscow have a lot of Turkoman pieces that come in from the tribes in the various countries around Russia that were once satellites of Soviet Russia. There are many: Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Kyrghizstan and Dagestan. Then there are the countries that were not part of USSR: Turkey, Afghanistan and Pakistan. The traditional cultures of these countries are influenced greatly by the Turkoman peoples who make up part of the population. Ethnic jewelry and textiles are derived from the traditional adornment of person and home by the Turkoman tribes. 

Like all other pieces on this web site, this piece is returnable with full refund if not satisfied with your purchase. 

Measurements: 3 inches (7.5 cm) x 2.4 inches (6.2 cm) 62 gm (2.2 ozs.)

Turkoman Attire Worn by Author of Blog

Turkoman Teke Tribal Woman's Attire in Merv, Turkmenistan

Click link to see more such jewelry.  

First the tall gilded silver and carnelian jeweled head covering is usually worn as a support for the veil, hidden except for the high front part.   This shawl or veil is made of finely woven silk, embroidered with traditional tribal symbols.  The spinning of the silkworm's web and the weaving, sewing and embroidery are all done by hand.  

The plain and gilded silver jewelry are made by the male silversmiths of the tribe.  You can see this giant cuff bracelet at the studio that houses my collection.

These Teke tribal silver cuff bracelets with layered gold and table cut agate cabochons. Matched pair of bracelets dated to 1850-1900 by Dieter and Reinhold Schlecter in Old Silver Jewellery of the Turkoman. Heavily decorated in tribal symbols and with the superior craftsmanship of the Teke silversmith. Because of their age, each of the bracelets shows marks of repair, revealed in attached photos.

These are typical of the Turkoman silversmith's techniques. They worked mainly in silver that had been imported from surrounding countries in the form of silver ingots. This the silversmiths melted down and formed their own almost pure heavy silver plates. No rolled sheets used in the master silversmith's hands.

The traditional tribal designs were laid out in a layer of thin gold, not a wash but a very durable amount of gold on the silver.

This process is made much more difficult in the case of large bracelets. The bracelets are hollow. so two sheets had to be put together smoothly. Only the face of the bracelet was gilded. The edge of the bracelet is either signed or decorated with something that looks like calligraphy.

The gemstones used are nearly always carnelian, sometimes turquoise or glass. Edges of Turkoman jewelry usually have ancestor symbols attached in the form of stylized rams' heads or just the horns. The gilded cut-out patterns usually suggest plants or water.

The jewelry worn by a Turkoman female reveals her status in the tribe, whether a wife or an unmarried woman, and something of her standing in the wider community.  This is true of all the clothing worn by the Turkoman woman, from the jeweled collar necklace to huge breastplates that reach from the top of the chest to the waist line, a dressy robe of silk and embroidery, a head covering resembling the one above and rings and bracelets all are meant to show the status of the wearer. 

The Champion Wears the Bazuband

In Mongolia, the nation's hundredth anniversary was celebrated on horseback.  The buzkashi games were played in many venues.  Buzkashi is still a popular sport in many parts of Greater Turkmenia, that is in all the places where the Turkic peoples influence the culture.  Northern Afghanistan is such a place.  

Buzkashi is the oldest sport played on horseback.  It is the national sport of Afghanistan.  The horses are highly prized and are well-trained and well cared for. The champion, or Chapandaz, earns his award, the bazuband, to wear laced on his arm.  His chapan is also part of his award.  He wears the chapan, a handwoven silk robe, draped on his shoulders as you see in the photo below of President Hamid Karzai. 

   

And on his arm the champion laces his beautifully worked silver bracelet that looks like the photo to the right of Karzai's photo:  the bazuband, the champion's bracelet for                                               

the Afghan buzkashi winner, just as it was for the ancient Persian archer champion, from which the tradition is carried on.  

The bazuband was a carryover from the ancient Iranians, or Persians, who fought their wars on horseback.  Often the battles would end with many horseless riders fighting hand-to-hand combat, a kind of no holds barred wrestling.  The heroes from the winning side of the battle were awarded the prize of a bazuband not only for their skill in archery but for their skill in wrestling.  

A buzkashi field is laid out with a tall post at one end and a circle painted onto the ground at the other.  Inside the circle, the administrator of justice, the referee, has placed the carcass of a headless goat, gutted, but now filled with sand.  The members of each team parade onto the field in tribal regalia, wearing their padded chapans and beautifully embroidered padded helmets.  When I saw the game in Kabul in 1974, many of the team members wore their hair in the traditional Mongolian queue.  

                                                             This is a game in action

The game begins with a judge deciding which team will pick up the goat carcass, the equivalent of our pigskin football, but larger and heavier, but easier to grasp than a wet football.  The team has already chosen their man who will pick up the goat.  Now the rest of the team must fend off the opposing team members while the man holding the goat carries it round the post at the far end of the field from where he picked up the headless carcass that you see the man in the white horse carrying in the photo above.  

After he passes round that post, he heads pell mell down the field to the circle of justice, into which he hopes to toss the goat.  His journey is not easy, neither going up the field to go round the post, nor when it grows much more difficult as he starts back toward the circle of justice.  The opposing riders will use their horses and their whips against the team that is guarding their goat carrier.  The horses know the game very well.  They force their bodies against the horses of the opposite team so that the rider can reach and grab the goat carcass away from the man who is carrying it.  In this game, the goat may change hands many times, back and forth from one team to another, until the the goat is tossed into the circle, and then the struggle begins again.  

Finally, when all the tournaments have been played for that particular season, a champion emerges to received accolades and awards.  He is named chapandaz, a wearer of the chapan.  What is more, he is awarded the prize of the bazuband, worn since ancient times by heroes of the people in both war and sport.  

See this bazuband and more of the history here.

Happy Birthday Mongolia, 100 Years Old Today

The Khans from Mongolia ruled a great part of the earth from the thirteenth to the fifteenth century.  But the same peoples had come out of the mountain home at least 400 years before the Empire was established in its farthest boundaries.  They settled much of the area where their rule became law in the fourteenth century.  Mongolia then had its turn as the ruled rather than the ruler until a hundred years ago when it gained its independence from China on December 29, 1911.

The Mongol tribes came out of the Altai mountains, which form a partition for China, Russia and Kazakhstan.  The descendants of these horseback riders from the mountains   are still spread far and wide throughout the Middle East and Central and South Asia.  From Central Europe and Turkey in the West to China in the East, from Russia and Kazakhstan in the North to the Northern part of India in the South.  The descendants of these people are still the major population in many of these countries.  They still add to the artisanal output of those nations from wonderful foods such as lamb and healthy dairy products to highly prized collectible carpets and jewelry.  Here is a photograph showing just one example

  The textile is home spun, hand dyed and hand loomed silk.  Then it is laboriously decorated almost over its complete surface with colorful silk threads in the old tribal patterns.  The asyk pendant is the symbol of the family, the two large heart shapes representing the father and mother and the small shape between them represent the child.  It is essentially a life symbol.  The ram's horn shapes on top of the asyk represent the tribal ancestors.  

The Turkic language separates into many different dialects; and they are written in different alphabets, in Chinese characters, in the Russian Cyrillic letters. It was at one time written in the Sanskrit-derived alphabet in India, which included parts of Pakistan and most of Afghanistan. By this time in Iran, they were writing Persian in the Arabic script;  in fact, in many parts of the Empire, the languages were written in Arabic script.  Finally the Turks of Turkey adopted the Latin alphabet in the 1920s, and Turkish became the first Ural-Altaic language to be written in the Latin letters that I am using to type this blog.  

Again I say Happy Birthday, Mongolia!  

You can see more Turkoman antique silver jewelry at http://craftsofthepast.artfire.com

Turkoman Cloak and its Clasp, or Turkmen, Chapan and Capraz

The Turkoman or Turkmen, names of the same people in English, make lined, handwoven silk cloaks for the males, females and children.   There is a certain ceremonial flair in the traditional male dress up clothing, and the women's robes are long and loose and profusely decorated. The embroidery that they add to the handwoven silk or cotton, or even store-bought cotton cloth, makes the feminine clothing very attractive.  The feminine headcoverings are sometimes spectacular, usually including a large piece of intricately wrought gilded silver.  We will discuss the headdresses in a later post; today we will show the use of the capraz on the male's dress-up cloak or chapan,  and for the ladies we discuss the canne as on the chapan in the photo below, and the flower collar or guljaka in the second photo below.

First, you might want to see what a chapan, the Turkmen or Turkoman female's dressy cloak, looks like.

  

Another variation of the embroidered silk clothing for the Turkoman female is a traditional  garment called the chyrpy.  This piece of clothing looks like the chapan, but there is one big difference. The  sleeves are not meant to wear on the arms but to hang from the shoulder seams and be drawn to the back of the cloak and banded together at about what appears to be a waistline when looking at the pattern for the garment.   The long, narrow sleeves with no opening for the hands are bound together with a fancily embroidered strip of silk or a braided, tasseled cord.  The garment is then worn over the head, not around the shoulders or the body.  

The chapan for the male is just as beautifully put together from narrow hand loomed strips of silk.  This garment is worn in the conventional manner, wrapped around the body and held together in front with a sash, a belt or by a silver fastener such as the one in the photo above.  

The fastener so illustrated in the photo above is the canne, a linking together of beautiful silver panels, often gilded and with pendants hanging from the bottom of the panels.  

But if the chapan wearer has the option of being very ostentatious in his symbolic jewelry, he will choose to fasten his embroidered silk chapan with a pair of magnificent capraz, such as these:

The outside point would be sewn to the fabric of the cloak, while a braided cord would secure the inside edge of the two pieces at the front opening of the chapan.  Click here to see more information on this complete capraz. 

Now as to the ladies' dresses, we know that they will be long and loose, but did I tell you that they will also be long-sleeved and high necked?  You probably already knew that.  Let's see what a flower collar or guljaka is.  

  The Turkoman woman wears this impressive piece of gilded silver as a brooch clasped or laced to the top opening of her cloak or tunic, just at collar level.  For that reason the Turkic name of this piece translates into English as flower collar.   In this photo it is shown on a woman's shawl of handwoven silk with rich, fine silk embroidery in the ancestor symbol pattern.  The shawl is made from the same kind of silk as the male and female garments of the finest quality. 

We will continue the discussion of traditional Turkoman adornment for future posts.  

Contact me for further information on the availability of similar items, or browse through the online shop at Crafts of the Past at Artfire.  The shop includes Turkoman, Kazakh, Afghan and Uzbeki items and Yemen silver pieces.  Most of the Turkoman and the Yemen pieces are from around 1900 or before, while some of the Afghan, Kazakh and Uzbeki may date from the first half of the 1900s.