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Title:Necklet (Musi)
Date:18th–19th century
Geography:Attributed to India
Medium:Gold
Dimensions:4 3/4 in. (12 cm)
Classification:Jewelry
Credit Line:John Stewart Kennedy Fund, 1915
Accession Number:15.95.49
Two Gold Necklets: 15.95.47, .49
One of the most important traditions in jewelry making in India is that of flexible chains and plaited and knitted structures. Not only were all the major types of loop-in-loop chains known in ancient times, but certain knits which give an effect similar to that of a woven loop-in-loop chain were also known; the latter are, however, more economical in the expenditure of effort involved and in the use of material, being made of a continuous wire rather than of hundreds of discrete and separately made links, and being typically hollow. The present pieces–hollow, finely knit, and drawn through a drawplate–have such dense surfaces they almost belie their method of manufacture.
Another typically Indian feature is the screw-post clasp. All non-Indian Islamic jewelry in our experience, with the exception of two fourteenth-century tubular bracelets also with dragon-head terminals, uses the friction-held split-pin keeper post.[1It seems likely that these bracelets are of Golden Horde Mongol origin, especially in light of parallels with material from the Simferopol Treasure (Moscow, n.d., middle ill us. on p. [10]). Indeed, the only other historical jewelry known to us that uses the screw arrangement is from the late Roman and Tribal Migrations period, which is known from finds in Europe and includes not only fibulas but also bracelets with affronted dragon-head terminals[2]
It is notable that the Indian jewelry screws are constructed exactly as those in late Roman and fourteenth-century examples-that is, by soldering a tight coil of wire to the post and inside the cylindrical element that receives it. Precisely when the screw-post principle was first used in Indian jewelry is unknown, but one is lead to suspect, partly on the basis of its virtual absence in medieval Islamic material, that it was known in India from ancient time.
[Jenkins and Keene 1983]
Footnotes:
1. Segall, Berta. Museum Benaki, Katalog der Goldschmiede-Arbeiten. Athens, 1938, no. 319; Rosenberg, Marc. Geschichte der Goldschmiedekunst auf technischer Grundlage, Munich, 1908, vol. 1, fig.141.
2. E.g.,Feldhaus, Franz M. Die Technik der Antike und des Mittelalters. Potsdam, 1931, fig. 252, nos. 4, 5; Rosenberg, 1908 (see note 1), vol. 1, fig. 142.
Lockwood de Forest (American), New York (until 1915; sold to MMA)
New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "Islamic Jewelry in The Metropolitan Museum of Art," April 22–August 14, 1983, no. 63.
Jenkins-Madina, Marilyn, and Manuel Keene. Islamic Jewelry in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York, 1983. no. 63, p. 120, ill. (b/w).
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